NHS bill for child emergency mental health admissions quadrupled in a decade

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By Emma Wilkinson

The cost of emergency mental health admissions for children and young people has quadrupled over the past decade, an analysis has shown.

Between 2012/13 and 2021/22 the bill in England rose from £22.5 million to £87.3 million with increased costs being driven by both rates of admission and length of stay, the study from University College London researchers found.

It came as a separate analysis collected by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) suggested that around 500,000 children and young people in England have attended emergency departments in mental health crisis since 2019.

This data, collected from 80 trusts through Freedom of Information requests, is evidence of a “catastrophic system-wide failure”, the nursing union said.

Previous research has shown that the number of children and young people needing emergency admission to acute medical wards due to mental health concerns rose by 65% over the 10-year period.

In the UCL analysis, the team used hospital episode statistics data to look at all relevant admissions for patients aged 5 to 18 years and looked at the costs associated with diagnosis, interventions needed, and length of stay.