Provision of treatment for people with mental illness in England needs to expand urgently to “remedy a gross inequality” whereby people with physical symptoms are four times as likely to get treatment as people who have mental health problems, says a report from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).1

Nearly half of all ill health among people under 65 is due to mental illness, yet only a quarter of them get treatment, says the report by the Mental Health Policy Group, a team of economists, psychologists, doctors, and NHS managers convened by the economics professor Richard Layard, programme director at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance.

Investing more money in treating mental illness would cost the NHS nothing …