The level of underfunding is, however, such that mental health providers are a huge part of the private health sector: Priory Group is a very big one.
Another factor is that a lot of training for psychologists is paid by the NHS, and funding for training has been going down everywhere (even in Scotland, which has a left-wing govt running the NHS).
It is just a resources problem. Even in the private sector, there isn't a supply response to higher prices. Ironically, the UK has lots of people who do undergrad Psychology, just none of them actually go on to practice because entry is so tightly controlled (for some reason, the NHS in Scotland is attempting to train nurses to do psychology with a couple of days training...that is going as well as you can imagine).
I understand no-one in the US wants to hear it...the UK system doesn't work (fully public health doesn't work, almost no countries in Europe with good healthcare have it, Australia is very similar to the UK, introduced private healthcare...their results are miles, miles, miles ahead).
