Three children in every classroom suffer from a diagnosable mental health problem, on average, but only 0.6 per cent of the NHS budget is spent on young people’s mental health services.
At same time, admissions for psychiatric conditions, eating disorders and self-harm among young people are soaring.
The Times’s Time to Mind campaign, launched in consultation with child psychologists and others, calls for urgent improvements to rescue young people from serious harm, ruined childhoods and a lifetime of suffering. A ten-point manifesto includes demands for an urgent study of the prevalence of child mental health problems, an end to the “wait-and-see” approach adopted by doctors and investment in early intervention.
It also demands an end to the practice of using police cells as a “place of safety” for young people suffering from a mental health crisis, and better out-of-hours services for families.
The campaign calls for local authorities to assess the mental health needs of children and to be held to account for failures, while the transition from child to adult mental health services must be made easier for teenagers, who, at present, face a “cliff edge” when they reach 18.
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The final three points call for better training for GPs, for mental health awareness to be included in teacher training, and for a national policy directive on child mental health.
Key statistics highlight the scale of the problem:
● Emergency admissions for psychiatric conditions have doubled over the past four years to 17,278.
● Admissions of young women for cutting, burning and other self-harm have increased by almost 70 per cent to 15,668 since 2004.
● The number of children treated on wards for eating disorders has increased by 12 per cent in one year and doubled over the past decade to 2,965.
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● Only 6 per cent of the NHS mental health budget goes on child services, representing just 0.6 per cent of the overall NHS budget.
● Spending on services fell from £766 million in 2010 to £717 million in 2012-13.