There is no excuse for the failings of our mental health care services

Editorial: The problems of poor care and abuse of patients require urgent ministerial attention

Our interviews with 22 young people make for uncomfortable reading (Getty)

It may seem as if we have been here before, and that nothing will ever get better. Investigative reporting finds that services for the mentally ill are inadequate and in extreme cases abusive. Inquiries are carried out. Bucks are passed. Sometimes, ministers take responsibility and promise improvements. Sometimes even prime ministers, with the power to increase budgets, say the right things. Theresa May was the last prime minister to make mental health a priority and to sound as if she meant it.

The pessimist will say that mental health will always be undervalued and underfunded, and that rhetoric about parity of esteem between physical and mental health care will never change anything. But The Independent, as a young and optimistic news organisation, argues that things are improving, if too slowly, and that decent, caring and well-run services for people with mental health problems are possible.

Admittedly, our joint investigation with Sky News has found appalling cases of abuse. We reported that teenagers at facilities run by a private-sector provider were pinned down, force-fed and excessively drugged. Our interviews with 22 young people make for uncomfortable reading, but we urge readers, concerned professionals and ministers to study them in order to understand the scale of the problem.

All of them describe excessive use of restraint by staff at the CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services) units run by the Huntercombe Group. The company was sold and its services taken over by another last year, which makes accountability for the failures difficult.

Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, the shadow mental health minister, has called for a rapid review, and the government’s response will be an important test of its ability to restore a sense of order and purpose to public services generally.

Plainly Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay, his reappointed health and social care secretary, have a number of urgent tasks on their hands. The NHS as a whole, a vast and difficult organisation at the best of times, is struggling to come to terms with the coronavirus backlog at a time of staff shortages when inflation is eating into its budgets. Then there is the subsidiary crisis of social care, with which Boris Johnson’s government failed to get to grips in the three years after he arrived in Downing Street claiming to have a plan.

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Yet it ought to be the mark of a decent country that it is able to care for people with mental health problems at the same time as dealing with the challenges of external shocks, whether they are a pandemic or a global energy crisis.

Mental health care is mostly better than it used to be, but the failures are inexcusable and too few people can get the help they need. The same goes more widely for the care of people with disabilities and special needs. We believe that care services can and will improve. It takes unflinching reporting, which is why we are proud of the work done by Rebecca Thomas, our health correspondent; good regulation, which is why the Quality Care Commission is so important; and sustained attention from government, which is why we hope that Mr Barclay and his ministerial team, now that the political excitements of the last few weeks have settled down, will now get to work with the energy and focus that the issue deserves.