What were we trying to do?
To estimate how increasing government spending on mental health services impacts suicide rates.

 

Why was this important?
Whether someone dies by suicide is influenced by a complex mix of different personal and environmental factors. Existing research suggests that poor access to mental healthcare is a key environmental factor.

Many countries have an aim of increasing the provision of mental health services. The UK government has had policies in place to increase spending on NHS mental health services since 2015. It is currently unknown whether suicide rates have decreased because of spending more on mental health services, and by how much.

This is important to inform future government choices about spending on mental health services. 

 

How did we do it?
We used data on suicide rates and local NHS expenditure on mental health services for local authority areas in England between 2014/15 and 2019/20.

 

Findings
We will report findings of the analysis in due course.

 

 

More information

 

 

Senior Programme Lead
Mike Spence
michael.spence@manchester.ac.uk