Frantic parents say only suicidal kids being seen
Critics claim youth mental health system is reaching breaking point
Youth mental health services are hitting breaking point with desperate parents reporting children have to be suicidal or self- harming just to get help.
New figures show nearly 50 per cent of children up to the age of 11 referred for a specialist mental health appointment last year had to wait more than three weeks.
Almost 800 had to wait longer than eight weeks.
The Weekend Herald has spoken to five parents who feel their children have been denied by what they say is a broken system.
One 6- year- old boy rejected by the system disclosed to a counsellor in the private sector that he had plans to take his own life.
Another 12- year- old boy told his mother he wanted to die because “life would be easier if I wasn’t here”.
His mother, Tracey Rountree of Pakuranga, said: “To get any help you need to have your child harm themselves or harm other children.
“When he says things like ‘ I don’t want to be here anymore’ that’s when you feel helpless,” Rountree said.
Ministry of Health deputy director of mental health Ian Soosay disagreed, saying the perception that children needed to be suicidal to access Child Adolescent Mental Health Services ( CAMHS) was “not factually correct”.
CAMHS teams work with more than 47,000 children each year, Soosay said, and those who were suicidal or self- harming should be seen within 24 to 48 hours.
“Generally, New Zealand has good provision of mental health services, but there is always more work which can be done,” Soosay said.
However, documents obtained under the Official Information Act show the “significant demand pressures” facing CAMHS were 0800 543 354 ( available 865 ( 0508 TAUTOKO) If it is an emergency and you feel you or someone else is at risk, call 111. flagged to Health Minister Jonathan Coleman last year.
A March 2016 report, obtained by the Green Party and provided to the Weekend Herald, said in the six years leading up to the 2014/ 15 financial year, the number of youth under the age of 19 accessing specialist mental health services had climbed from about 28,000 to 44,000.
In this same time period, the amount of public money spent on youth mental health increased from $ 130m to $ 161m.
In the past week the ministry has come under fire from two independent advocacy groups calling for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the state of youth mental health services in New Zealand. Green Party health spokeswoman Julie Anne Genter has also been seeking an urgent nationwide inquiry into mental health services, claiming the system i s “broken and stretched to the limit”.
On Wednesday Coleman released a draft suicide prevention strategy for public consultation, highlighting his concerns over youth suicide rates.
Coleman’s announcement has been warmly received by the Parents of Children with Additional Needs Collective ( POCAN), which recently surveyed 100 parents who had accessed CAMHS and found half believed their child was at risk of suicide before being accepted by the service.
More concerningly, 94 per cent of these parents said they believed their child was still suicidal after CAMHS intervention.
The majority of parents said CAMHS did not assess their child’s risk of suicide and some said they were turned away and advised to go through a parenting course.
One simply wrote: “Denied us help” on the questionnaire.
POCAN spokeswoman Rountree said her son had t wice been discharged from CAMHS “because they didn’t feel like they could help him”, she said. He has been stood down from school three times for physical altercations, including hitting other students.
He’s been running away from home since the age of 4 and was almost hit by a car when he escaped from school in Year 5.
When she first called CAMHS for support, she was told her son would only be referred on to specialist mental health services if he was “in the top 2 per cent of extreme behaviour”.
Another mother, who spoke to the Weekend Herald on the condition of anonymity, said her 6- year- old son’s suicidal ideas were not taken seriously by CAMHS. She decided to pay $ 450 for an appointment in the private sector only to be told her son was at high risk of suicide.
A mum identified only as Grace, who has an 11- year- old son using CAMHS, said she has been “pushing and pushing” for help through the system in the past six years.
At the beginning of last year, Grace said she asked ministry officials for her son to be allowed to do correspondence learning from home because he had been stood down from school for behaviour problems several times. She said this proposal was only given the green light in December, after her son had come up with a plan to take his own life.
Tracey Rountree, mother