Young people’s mental health care ‘failing’

The Scottish Government has come under fire over its “scandalous” mental health care services for young people, as new figures showed in one part of Scotland almost two thirds of children and adolescents have to wait longer than the target time to get help.

Opposition politicians and children’s campaigners hit out after it was revealed that almost one in five patients failed to start their treatment with Child and Adolescent Mental health Services (CAMHS) within 18 weeks.

A total of 4,092 youngsters began getting treatment for mental health problems in the period April to June 2017, official figures from NHS Scotland showed.

While 80.7 per cent of them were seen within 18 weeks – a drop from 83.6 per cent in the previous quarter – in the NHS Grampian area only 34.5 per cent of youngsters started treatment within the Scottish Government’s target time.

Eight NHS boards met the 18-week standard but NHS Grampianandfiveotherareas – NHS Fife, Highland, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside – did not, leading to complaints 0 Labour’s Monica Lennon attacked government figures of a postcode lottery for treatment.

Monica Lennon, Labour’s inequalities spokeswoman, said: “Again and again Labour has raised the issue with Nicola Sturgeon, but instead we have seen an underwhelming mental health strategy, published after months of delay, and without a key commitment to improving access to counsellors in schools.

A spokesman for the Scottish Children’s Services Coalition said: “Research indicates that 10 per cent of children and young people (aged five to 16) has a clinically diagnosable mental health problem (around three in every classroom), and 20 per cent of adolescents may experience a mental health problem in any given year.”