Mental health services face “vicious cycle” of staff shortages, MPs warn

Increased workload, burnout, and a high staff turnover are driving a “vicious cycle” of staff shortages in England’s NHS mental health services, a committee of MPs has warned.The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts said it had heard worrying evidence of increasing pressures on mental health staff at a time of soaring demand.1 Its report noted that 17 000 staff (12%) left the NHS mental health workforce in 2021-22, up from pre-pandemic levels of around 14 000 leaving each year. The proportion of staff citing work-life balance as a reason for leaving rose from 4% in 2012-13 to 14% in 2021-22, and the percentage of days lost from the workforce for psychiatric reasons doubled in a decade.The committee said that staff shortages were holding back the improvement and expansion of NHS mental health services as a whole, and it called on the NHS to tackle the mismatch between staff…
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