The mental health service dealt with 4,539 cases in 2021.

This figure, calculated in December, was up from last year’s caseload of 4,469.

In December 2019 there were 4,148.

However, Health Minister Lawrie Hooper clarified that these figures ’do not capture [the number of] individuals who have sought mental health intervention through access to primary care or third sector organisations’.

The figures were given in response to a question in Tynwald from Castletown, Arbory and Malew MHK Tim Glover, who also asked about waiting times in Tynwald.

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Mr Hooper broke the times down by the various teams in the mental health service.

For the child and adolescent mental health service, the average waiting time was 217 days.

And for the community mental health service and the community wellbeing service, it was two weeks.

The older person’s mental health service had a waiting time of three weeks.

Mr Glover asked the minister whether he would consider 217 days an acceptable waiting time.

The minister said that he ’completely agreed’ that that figure as an average waiting time was ’completely unacceptable’.

’I would flag that any referrals that present with a high risk of harm would actually be referred immediately and dealt with straight away as part of the crisis response,’ he added.

’If people are in crisis they would get that immediate referral’.

Mr Hooper said he had reached out to Manx Care to find out what is being done ’so that these waiting times can be reduced as a matter of priority’.

Manx Care told Manx Radio that the backlog for children’s mental health services had been ’severely exacerbated by the pressures of the Covid pandemic which have seen demand as well as perception significantly increase’.