Mental health services turn away 100 youngsters a week
MORE than 100 children and teenagers a week are being turned away from mental health services in Scotland, it has emerged amid warnings that young people are being left to deteriorate before finally undergoing treatment.
Politicians have called for an investigation into Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) after it was revealed 6,931 referrals were rejected in 2015. Evidence to Holyrood’s Health and Sport Committee suggests a surge in diagnoses for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was putting pressure on services, while the number of children under 15 in Scotland prescribed anti-depressants has more than doubled since 2009 from 560 to 1,123.
SocialWorkScotlandsaid that inappropriate CAMHS referrals, particularly by GPs, were “exacerbating waiting times”.
But mental health charity Penumbra blamed an “unacceptable lack of focus” on lower-level community resources for forcing GPs into CAMHS referrals.
It added: “This may be why approximately 20 per cent of referrals to CAMHS are rejected as ‘not appropriate’, which in practice means they are not sufficiently ill enough to receive support despite having sought help from a professional for identifiable mental health difficulties.”
The committee also heard that triage – a process of determining patients’ priority for treatment based on the severity of their condition – “often takes place” before a CAMHS referral, so it was “difficult to understand why rejected referrals are at such a high level”.
A spokesman for the Scottish Children’s Services Coalition said: “What is crucial here is for a review to establish why these referrals are being rejected and to establish consistent criteria across the country for this.”
Neil Findlay, convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee, urged the Scottish Government to launch ai investigation into the thousands of referrals rejected last year.
In a letter to Maureen Watt, Minister for Mental Health, he said referral pathways must be “clear and consistent across the coun- try”. Mr Findlay said: “There is a very significant number of children and young people whose referrals are being rejected, and there is no clear understanding of why that is the case.
“It seems logical to me that we need a thorough investigation.”
Ms Watt said: “Mental health spending has increased substantially under this Government and has supported the increase in the mental health workforce to historically high levels.”