Inadequate and underfunded mental health care in England leading thousands of "tragic and unnecessary deaths

The report - by a taskforce set up by NHS England - said around three-quarters of people with mental health problems received no help at all. It said more needs to be done to tackle rising suicide rates. Ministers agreed with the findings, committing a £1bn extra a year by 2020 to treat a million more people. This is to come out of the £8.4bn the government has promised to the health service during this Parliament and comes on top of extra money already announced for children's services. Prime Minister David Cameron said the plan would help put "mental and physical healthcare on an equal footing".Mental health care is sometimes called the Cinderella service of the NHS. Over the years it has been neglected, marginalised and under-funded. The taskforce's report acknowledges this. So will the recommendations have the necessary impact? Ministers and NHS bosses have all said they're fully committed to it.

But similar things were said in 2011 when the coalition launched its mental health strategy. that didn't stop investment being cut. With money so tight in the NHS, the nagging fear is that despite the promises being made history could still repeat itself.Currently £9.2bn a year is spent on the condition - less than a tenth of the NHS budget - despite one in four people experiencing a mental health problem each year. The result is that an estimated three-quarters of people go without any help, with the taskforce's report acknowledging that services were so bad that lives have been "put on hold or ruined" and "thousands of tragic and unnecessary deaths" have been caused.

NHS England believes the strategy will help to ensure that another one million people receive support - whereas at the moment fewer than two million people do so.It said that together these measures would help reduce the demand on specialist inpatient wards in hospitals and therefore help tackle the much-criticised practice of sending people long distances for treatment.

Paul Farmer, the chief executive of the mental health charity Mind, who led the taskforce, said the strategy should act as a "landmark moment" for mental health care, which was currently "very patchy". "We are saying to the NHS, to government, to industry, to local leaders and to the public that mental health must be a priority for everyone," he said.

While the extra funding was crucial, he added that some stigma around mental illness "still prevails, right the way inside the health service, as it does in society", and this needed to change. NHS England boss Simon Stevens said he was "fully committed" to implementing the recommendations. But Royal College of Psychiatrists president Prof Sir Simon Wessely warned it would take "sustained work" to end the "decades of inequality". And Prof Sheila Hollins, of the British Medical Association, pointed out such promises had been made before.

"Those suffering from mental illness need to see these pledges fulfilled."