Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Insight – Mental Health Needs Assessment – Chapter Five: Working-age adults

Key statistics

65% of people living in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are adults aged between 16 and 64 (working-age adults). It is predicted there will be a 15.6% increase in the number of working-age adults in our local area from 2021 – 41.
Mental health services across England are under increasing pressures, including workforce shortages, increased demand and the wider impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (Department of Health & Social Care, 2023).

National data shows that mental illness is the largest cause of disability amongst working-age adults (Kirk-Wade, 2022). An estimated 1 in 6 adults (18%) experiencing depression and/or an anxiety disorder within any given week (NHS Digital, 2014), though this may have increased due to wider pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic (O’Shea, 2021).
It is estimated that more than 123,500 working-age adults experienced a common mental health condition within the past week in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
In 2022/23, GP registers showed that around 95,000 adults (12%) in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough were known to have depression and 8,695 (0.8%) a severe mental illness (NHS Digital, 2023c).

Engagement with local people highlights there is a gap in people’s understanding of what support is available to them.
For the past 5 years, per head spend on mental health services in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has been below the national average.
There is ongoing work in our local system to better understand and share good practice of trauma-informed approaches.
There are national pressures on the NHS workforce, which are reflected in our local system and are a major constraint in the system.

1 in 8 GP patients in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough report having long-term mental health conditions (NHS England, 2023a). General practice is a first point of contact for many people with common mental health conditions.
Talking Therapies (previously known as IAPT and locally the Psychological Wellbeing Service) provides a range of treatment offers. In 2021/22, 8 in 10 people in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough who were referred to Talking Therapies began treatment. Around half of this group completed treatment.

The Community Mental Health Transformation has addressed gaps in the mental health system and strengthened links between primary and secondary care services.
There are increasing numbers of referrals to the Primary Care Mental Health Service (PCMHS), which responds to GP requests for mental health assessment and recommends mental health interventions.
A range of factors are likely to have contributed to increased pressures on local inpatient services in the past year.
For people attending Accident and Emergency for mental health related reasons between August 2022 and July 2023 almost half (47%) of spent over 6 hours in this department.

There is a range of voluntary and community sector support within Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, as well as services providing practical support for people with mental health conditions and those who carer for them.
The newly formed Integrated Neighbourhoods bring together community initiatives that boost social support.
Adult social care plays a key role in supporting people with mental health conditions

International data shows that people with mental illness face physical health inequalities, including in terms of risk factors, early detection (such as cancer screening (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2023)) and health outcomes.
An initial evaluation of the local Talking Therapies service found that there was a 75% reduction in hospital admissions in people who accessed the support pathway for long-term physical health conditions (NHS England, 2023c).
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is one of the top performers for annual physical health checks, 63% of people on the SMI register receiving all six physical checks by the first quarter of 2023/24. However, completion of a health check does not yet show a sustained improvement in health outcomes.