Young People’s Mental Health

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that, although today we are debating young people’s mental health, many of the same issues apply to mental health services across the board for all members of our communities.

The Government published a response to the Youth Select Committee report in January 2016. That response was, on the whole, disappointing. It referred mainly to work that the Government were already doing rather than the additional work that they and other agencies clearly need to do. Most disappointing of all, the response rejected the key recommendation that statutory levels of attainment in mental health education should be introduced for all young people. I welcome the fact that the Government have subsequently announced some additional funding for young people’s mental health, but I remain very concerned about the current state of mental health services for our young people and the resourcing of those services.

I will focus, therefore, on the current state of services, and what I believe to be evidence of a crisis that is growing, not diminishing, and demands a response far bolder and more comprehensive than that which the Government are currently offering. I will also return to the conclusions of the Youth Select Committee report.

One in four of us will experience mental ill health in any given year. That means that mental health is something that affects every one of us. All of us have a friend or family member who has mental ill health, and many of us will experience mental ill health ourselves. I have known close friends and family members who have suffered from severe anxiety that impacted on their daily lives, clinical depression and eating disorders. There are few worse feelings than the worry for a loved one who seems unreachable in the pit of depression, except perhaps the worry when that loved one is a child. All any of us wants for our own children and the young people we represent is that they grow up happy, healthy and resilient to the stresses and strains of our world. Watching a precious child struggle with clinical depression, severe anxiety or an eating disorder is absolutely devastating.

According to NHS statistics, around one in 10 children and young people has a diagnosable mental health condition; that is around three students in a typical classroom. Many more young people do not have a diagnosable condition but experience a period of mental ill health or emotional distress during their childhood or adolescence. The Government’s own measures of children’s wellbeing found that almost one in four children showed some evidence of mental ill health. Half of mental health problems are established by the age of 14 and three quarters by the age of 24.

Shockingly, suicide is the most common cause of death for boys aged between five and 19, and the second-most common for girls of that age, after traffic accidents. A recent survey by Girlguiding found that 69% of girls aged seven to 21 feel that they are not good enough. It is thought that around one in eight young people self-harm between the ages of 11 and 16.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I know that my hon. Friend also has concerns, which a number of us share, about serious youth violence. Does she agree with me that mental ill health is now understood to be a key trigger in gang and serious youth violence, and that this deserves a serious and concentrated focus from within the health service and the Government? There is some very good practice out there. It is, sadly, nothing like widely available enough to help us deal with this problem.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful and important point. This is an issue that affects both our constituencies to a significant degree.

Only 0.7% of NHS funding is spent on young people’s mental health and only 16% of that funding is spent on early intervention. The Royal College of Psychiatrists also reports that additional funding the Government have committed to young people’s mental health is not getting to the frontline. Responses to a recent freedom of information request from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) revealed that although the Secretary of State made a commitment that the proportion of funding for mental health services should be increasing everywhere this year, and this is desperately needed, 57 of the country’s clinical commissioning groups are actually reducing the proportion of funding for mental health services.

The charity YoungMinds reports that three quarters of young people with mental health problems may not get access to the treatment they need. Child and adolescent mental health services, on average, turn away nearly a quarter of children referred to them for treatment by concerned parents, GPs, teachers and others. That finding is supported by evidence from the Association of Colleges, which reports that, of 127 colleges responding to a survey, many reported real difficulties referring students on to health services in times of crisis, with 61% of respondents reporting that their relationship as a college with local mental health services is only “fair” or “not very good/non-existent”. The thresholds for support are going up at precisely a time at which demand for services is increasing. This has the potential to create a ticking time bomb of mental ill health for the future.

The average waiting times for all CAMHS providers was six months for a first appointment and almost 10 months for the start of treatment; and an investigation by Pulse recently found that three in five referrals from GPs to CAMHS are being batted back to primary care without any access to specialist support. When early intervention is not available, it is very often schools and colleges that end up dealing with the consequences, and they are woefully under-resourced to do so. A recent survey by the National Association of Head Teachers found that only a third of primary schools have access to a school-based counsellor, and that of those who do have access, 59% have a counsellor on the school site for one day a week or less.