The distribution of community psychiatric nurses in England: are they where they should be?

Given the substantial increase in the numbers of community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) in England in the last 15 years this paper asks the question: is CPN activity where it should be? In-other words is activity distributed around the country according to need? Various indicators of need are suggested including population age structure, deprivation indices and suicide rates. We find no evidence -- based on information from scatterplots, Spearman correlations and more innovative measures of inequality -- that CPNs are distributed according to need. If this is confirmed by further research it is cause for alarm -- CPNs should be where they are most needed.