Costs rose sharply over a decade
The cost of emergency hospital admissions for mental health among children and young people in England nearly quadrupled over the last decade, according to research published in BMJ Open and reported by Medical Xpress. The study found that total costs rose from £22.5 million in 2012/13 to £87.3 million in 2021/22.
Researchers described the work as a retrospective observational study based on Hospital Episode Statistics covering all emergency admissions for young people aged 5 to 18 years in England between April 1, 2012 and March 31, 2022. They calculated costs by looking at diagnosis, interventions, and length of stay.
The headline figure is striking, but the broader pattern may be even more important. The study says the rise was driven by increases in both admission rates and the length of hospital stays. That means the financial pressure on the National Health Service did not come from one isolated factor. It reflected a larger change in both how many young people were arriving in crisis and how intensive those admissions were becoming.
Mental health admissions outpaced wider pediatric cost growth
The researchers found that the cost of pediatric emergency admissions for any reason doubled over the decade. Mental health admissions grew much faster, rising by just under 300% over the same period.
That divergence shows mental health emergencies are taking up a rising share of acute pediatric hospital resources. In other words, this is not just a story about general inflation in hospital care or system-wide pressure on children’s services. Mental health-related emergencies appear to be expanding at a materially faster rate than pediatric admissions overall.
The study sits alongside a wider shift in need. The source text cites NHS Digital figures showing that in 2023, one in five children and young people aged 8 to 25 in England had a probable mental disorder, up from one in nine in 2017. The researchers had also previously reported a 65% increase in children and young people needing emergency admission to acute medical wards for mental health concerns between 2012 and 2022.
Together, those figures point to a system facing both higher incidence and higher acuity. The new analysis adds the missing economic dimension: what that rise is costing when young people reach the point of emergency hospital care.
The pandemic changed the shape of the burden
The study identified a spike in mental health admission costs after 2019/20, followed by a flattening after 2020/21 that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. Even after admission numbers declined following the pandemic, overall costs stayed high because long-stay admissions increased.
That finding is significant because it suggests the burden did not simply ease when total admissions came down. Fewer admissions do not necessarily mean lower pressure if the cases that do present are more complex, require longer care, or are harder to discharge safely.
Long stays can reflect multiple pressures at once: more severe clinical presentations, limited onward support, and the difficulty of moving patients to the right setting once emergency care begins. The study itself does not claim causes beyond what was analyzed, but it clearly shows that duration of care became a major cost driver.
Girls and younger teens accounted for most of the cost
In 2021/22, more than 80% of the total emergency mental health admission cost was attributed to females, according to the analysis. More than half of the cost was linked to children and young people aged 11 to 15 years.
Those numbers indicate that the pressure is not distributed evenly across the population. Emergency mental health care spending is heavily concentrated in a relatively narrow band of patients, particularly adolescent girls and younger teenagers.
The study also found that eating disorders and self-harm were the two most costly conditions in 2021/22. That result is notable because eating disorders represented a relatively small share of overall admissions, yet still generated high costs. The implication is that some categories of crisis place a disproportionate strain on hospital care because of the intensity and duration of treatment required.
For health leaders and policymakers, that matters. Spending totals alone can obscure where intervention is most urgently needed. This study suggests that the biggest financial and clinical pressures are clustering around a defined group of patients and a defined set of crisis presentations.
Why the findings matter
Emergency admission is among the most expensive and least preventive parts of a mental health pathway. When costs rise this quickly, it usually signals a deeper failure to meet need earlier and in less acute settings. The study does not test every reason behind the trend, but it does establish that the consequences for the NHS are becoming substantial.
It also shows why measuring cost matters alongside counting cases. Admission rates describe scale, but cost patterns reveal severity, duration, and strain on infrastructure. The rise from £22.5 million to £87.3 million is therefore not just an accounting story. It is a marker of worsening pressure in child and adolescent mental health care.
The broader warning is that even if headline admission numbers stabilize, the system may remain under intense stress if high-cost, long-stay emergencies continue. The research suggests that England’s pediatric mental health crisis is no longer visible only in prevalence surveys or waiting-list debates. It is now being registered directly in acute hospital spending.
That makes the study important well beyond finance. It provides evidence that emergency mental health care for children and young people is becoming a more central challenge for the health system, particularly for adolescent girls and for conditions such as self-harm and eating disorders where the cost of crisis care can be especially high.
This article is based on reporting by Medical Xpress. Read the original article.
Originally published on medicalxpress.com
