Future in mind: Promoting, protecting and improving our children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing

Poor mental health is the largest cause of disability in the UK. It’s also closely connected with other problems, including poor physical health and problems in other areas like relationships, education and work prospects. If we want to improve these aspects of people’s lives, we’ll need to make improvements to mental health and wellbeing.

Prioritising mental health

The Department of Health (DH) want public services to reflect the importance of mental health in their planning, putting it on a par with physical health. So they are:

• making better access to mental health services and shorter waiting times a priority for NHS England
• making reducing mental health problems a priority for Public Health England, the new national public health service
• making mental health part of the new national measure of wellbeing, so it’s more likely to be taken into account when government creates policy
• providing £400 million between 2011 and 2015 to give more people access to psychological therapies - including adults with depression, and children and young people
• providing up to £16 million of funding over 4 years for Time to Change, the campaign against mental health stigma and discrimination

DH has also set up a taskforce to recommend how to improve mental health services for children and young people. The taskforce will publish its findings in spring 2015.

Future in mind: Promoting, protecting and improving our children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing forms part of DH's commitment to make mental health services more effective and accessible.