Emergency Mental Health Care

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 23 February 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:37, 23 February 2021

I thank the Member for her question. Of course, we have recognised throughout that there is more than one sort of harm that comes from coronavirus, and the impact on people's mental health and well-being is certainly one of the things to which we have always attempted to pay close attention. I know the Member will be pleased that the British Medical Journal recently reported on evidence that there has not been a rise in suicide rates in the early part of the pandemic. But I agree with what Mandy Jones said that these are early days, and that the impact of the pandemic will go on for many months, and longer than that, to come. But it was at least encouraging that the worst feared impacts in those early days did not appear to have materialised.

The additional investment in mental health is actually £43 million in the draft budget. That comes on top of the fact that mental health is the single largest budget line within the health service here in Wales. That £43 million has to do an awful lot, Llywydd, of course: it has to strengthen services in the community; it has to make sure that young people do not, as David Melding alluded, end up in age-inappropriate settings if they need in-patient treatment; it has to make sure that we go on improving services for people with dementia and the need for mental health services later on in life. But it will have been calculated in the normal ways, in partnership with the health service, the third sector and those who do so much to help provide services for people in Wales with a mental health condition.