ANYONE who has suffered a serious mental health problem, or watched someone close to them struggle, will know how just crucial it is that the right treatment is made available quickly. For children and young people, this is perhaps even more important.
As the powerful testimony of 17-year-old Gordon Edwards highlights, however, many are simply not receiving the help they need. The teenager had a history of mental illness and received specialist care in Lancashire before moving to Bathgate, West Lothian, to live with his mother. After experiencing a recurrence of his crippling insomnia and hallucinations, he spent more than a year desperately trying to access treatment through NHS Lothian’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to no avail, instead being referred to a raft of non-NHS agencies.
Mr Edwards believes the reason he was turned down on multiple occasions for help from CAMHS - which provides access to specialist professionals – is a severe lack of resources. He also says young people are routinely diverted into other services in order to ease the burden on the increasing waiting lists.
It was only when the teenager became suicidal and presented at A&E that he eventually received treatment. But he still feels he is not getting the specialist help he needs, and fears others like him are left to become seriously ill before being offered the appropriate treatment.
Mr Edwards’ story is extremely concerning and we must applaud his bravery in speaking out publicly to highlight failings in the system. We wish him well.
But the fact that there are serious failings in the provision of mental health services to young people is not new. Only last month The Herald reported how four of the country’s health boards – including NHS Lothian – failed to meet the 18-week waiting time target for CAMHS, while one in five cases referred to the service were rejected.
Charities and campaigners say Mr Edwards’ case underlines the “incredible pressure” facing youth mental health provision in Scotland, which receives just 0.5 per cent of the overall NHS budget, and 5.8 per cent of mental health funding.
They also say not providing specialist treatment quickly proves costly both in terms of the trauma to the young person and their family, and further down the line, to the NHS. It is also worth noting that the bar is currently set far higher for young people to access in-patient care than for adults.
With this in mind, it is surely time for NHS managers and the Scottish Government to not only increase the funding to CAMHS but re-think their shape. More focus must be put on early intervention.
This won’t be easy, of course, with trusts already struggling to balance the books following years of austerity and pressure from other areas of medicine. But with research showing more young people suffering mental illness than ever before, now is surely the time to invest in a better, more responsive service to help them.
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