Cutting mental health waiting times ‘could save UK £1bn a year’

Ministers have been told cutting waiting times for thousands of people in Britain’s mental health crisis could help employment and save the government £1bn a year.

According to research by Lancaster University, providing access to faster treatment across England through the NHS would help to improve the health of hundreds of thousands of people while bringing economic benefits for the nation at large.

In a new study to be published in the latest edition of the respected Review of Economics and Statistics academic journal, Prof Roger Prudon found that a one-month delay in the start of mental health treatment resulted in 2% of patients losing their jobs.

Drawing on data for waiting times from the Netherlands between 2012 and 2019, Prudon said a one-month reduction could help as many as 80,000 people get access to treatment annually, which would save more than €300m (£253m) in unemployment-related costs every year.

He said the same calculation could be applied to the UK, given a comparable prevalence in mental health problems, as well as similar treatment times and cost to the economy and public finances from unemployment.

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Source: The Guardian, 21 May 2025