Over the past 20 years, we have seen a dramatic shift in how we conduct our daily lives. With digital shopping, ordered items are delivered the same day and communicating is easy with distant family. The years 2020–22 and the global pandemic brought an escalated pace of change, including in healthcare with vaccine appointments booked online.2 However, the same cannot be said about mental health services where the experiences of both delivering and receiving help lags behind.

This issue was raised by Rebecca Cotton, Director of Policy at the Mental Health Network, in the publication quoted above. If you ask the question ‘How much has mental health changed in the last 20 years?’, we expect that, like her, your answer will be that it hasn’t changed much!