We need to prioritise mental health services

INCREASINGLY, parents of children and young people with mental health problems are told there’s no treatment available because their children are “not ill enough”.

According to GPs, patients may have to attempt suicide before they are even referred to specialist children’s mental health services (CAMHS). Even then, they may wait years for treatment.

The BMA confirmed that increasingly strict referral criteria to help manage demand can mean only the sickest patients get the care they need.

We wouldn’t wait to treat cancer until it becomes life threatening or ignore cardiac problems until the person has a heart attack. Mental health is every bit as serious as physical health.

“Austerity cuts” have made both statutory services and charities cut back on the services they offer to children and young adults with mental health problems.

The extent of the problems is hidden as statutory services increasingly put people in the “too difficult to treat” or “not yet critically ill” categories. So, progress towards “targets” becomes increasingly meaningless.

Governments have prioritised funding for physical conditions to try to hide the cutbacks in mental health services.

Three quarters of mental health problems develop by the age of 18. 70-75 percent of people with diagnosable mental illness receive no treatment at all.

Parents, children and young people struggle to cope; they become increasingly desperate as they can find nowhere they can turn to for help.

There is no room left for excuses; no place for meaningless statistics which try to paper over the yawning gaps in mental health provision.

It’s time to prove to our young people that we care when they suffer from mental health problems.

Mental health matters.

Alan Hilliar