We can ill afford to neglect the nation’s mental health like this

One parent was told their anorexic daughter ‘wasn’t thin enough’ for treatment

Imagine for a moment that you are the parent of a young child who has fallen off their bicycle and broken their arm or leg. Your child is screaming in pain; you will obviously do anything to help alleviate that pain.

On the way to hospital, you try to calm your daughter or son down, to let them know that everything is going to be OK, that soon the doctors will fix them, with a plaster cast and perhaps a tiny operation – no, don’t worry, you can have cake. Of course, we can go to Disneyland. We can go wherever you want, because you are being so brave!

Inside, you do not feel brave, though you cannot show it. You are a parent, a grown-up, and it is your responsibility to stay strong. You arrive at the hospital and breathe a sigh of relief because, soon, everything will be better, soon the professionals will take over and take away the pain. It is all going to be OK.

Now imagine that the doctor confirms that they have fractured their limb. “We can treat your child and apply a plaster cast,” the doctor announces, “…but not for six months.”

Six months? Half a year? Your child limping around with a debilitating injury, the injury getting worse and their pain becoming unmanageable. There must have been a mistake, a mix-up of some sort. “I am afraid that is the current waiting time,” the doctor repeats. “Six months.”

Such a scenario seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? And yet for children suffering from mental illnesses, such experiences are commonplace. I have a friend, the father of a 14-year-old boy with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) so debilitating that he struggled to leave the house and go to school, who cannot talk about the battle to get his son treatment without crying.

“The relief we felt when we finally got a referral to a hospital was huge,” says my friend.

“We thought we were within touching distance of treatment and an end to our son’s pain. Then the doctor told us we would have to wait six months.” It was only when the father himself broke down at an appointment that the case was escalated and his son was placed in psychiatric care.

Here is what we know about cases of mental illness: half of them will begin by the age of 14; most are incredibly treatable if caught early; and yet the average time between a young person in the UK receiving a diagnosis and treatment is 10 years. Children are actually “lucky” if they are seen within half a year.

The crisis is such that this week, a report from the Care Quality Commission into child and adolescent mental health services said that GPS often have to tell young people with problems to pretend things are worse than they are to get help. One parent said they had been told their anorexic daughter “wasn’t thin enough for eating disorder services”. The report concluded that change must be accelerated “to protect children and young people from unnecessary distress”.

What this report shows is a system that does not – or cannot, for funding reasons – take mental illness seriously.

Waiting until a child attempts suicide or has a complete nervous breakdown is like only treating diabetics when they get to the point of needing a foot amputated; telling the parent of a young anorexic girl that she is not yet thin enough for care is as mad as telling a smoker with early stage lung cancer that they should puff on more fags until their disease is at least stage two.

Nothing screams “comorbidity” quite like a mental illness left to fester like an open sore – I’m willing to bet that a large amount of adults who end up in prison or drug and alcohol treatment were children who had mental health issues that went untreated. The inability of government to get a grip on this is honestly one of the most baffling issues of our time. You don’t need to be a brainbox to see that investing in good mental health from an early age has a ripple effect that pays dividends.

Until that happens, any parent who is worried about the mental well-being of their child should know that there are some brilliant charities out there that provide support to young people: place2be.org.uk, youngminds. org.uk, mind.org.uk and The Mix (0808 808 4994). And remember: you are not alone, even if right now it feels like you are.