We are playing Russian roulette with young lives

I’ve seen some sad things, but six teenage boys entering a church carrying a coffin that contains their friend does somewhat raise the bar for devastation.

The funeral was for a boy who my son had gone to junior school with; a lovely, shy, highly intelligent young man who asked questions about what the universe meant when he was really too small to have such big thoughts. Maybe he never stopped worrying. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, and on the day after a party, he took his own life.

That sorrow is not mine to tell, but what I can say is that every single parent in that church vowed to stop nagging about the A-level revision their child was, or wasn’t, doing. Why give a damn about exams when the tearful 18-year-olds all around us – this, their first anguished intimation of mortality – were so precious; not because of what they might become if they worked hard enough, but for who they are.

This is Mental Health Awareness Week and, dear God, do we need to be more aware. Our young people are in the middle of an epidemic of depression, anxiety and self-harm. So deep in the middle that I don’t think we have fully appreciated its scale or gravity.

We do know that the number of children and teenagers who are taking their own lives is at its highest rate for 14 years, with more than four suicides every week. In 2015, there were 168 males aged 10 to 19 and 63 females in the same age group who killed themselves.

Boys are more likely to succeed. Girls leave room for rescue, for second and third thoughts; not boys, bless their valiant, impetuous hearts.

For a moment, forget the jibes about Snowflakes and ask yourself what the hell is going on? The vicar at the funeral warned, quite rightly, of the alienating dangers of social media. Certainly, the number of children referred for mental health treatment by schools has soared by more than a third in the last three years to almost 200 every day. In itself, this need not

be a bad sign. Teachers are picking up when pupils are in trouble and children have more confidence to admit they have problems. The drawback is that the help isn’t there, despite a promise by the Department for Education to spend an extra £300million on support. When one of my own teenagers had serious difficulties, we were told that their name was on a list and, within 16 months, they could receive group therapy.

Sixteen months! No doctor would dare discharge a teenager from hospital who had a frightening heart condition and tell them to expect a letter next year. Yet, all too often, this is what happens to vulnerable youngsters who are cutting themselves or who admit to suicidal thoughts

Disgracefully, more than a third of referrals are not accepted because they fail to meet the “threshold” set by Child and Adolescent Mental Heath Services.

Did that lovely, irreplaceable boy in the coffin meet some arbitrary threshold? Maybe, maybe not. What we need, and urgently, is full parity in the NHS between mental and physical health. And much more research into what turns an anxious adolescent into a suicide risk. Until we get it, make no mistake; we are playing Russian roulette with children’s lives.