Mental Illness: Children

(asked on 15th December 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of trends in children's mental health; and what step he is taking to tackle mental ill health among children.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 22nd December 2017

The Department has commissioned a new national prevalence survey of children and young people’s mental health – the first since 2004. The survey will estimate the extent of mental ill health in the 2-19 year old population. It will examine the impact of issues such as social media and cyberbullying, self-harm and eating disorders. The survey will also analyse the data by characteristics such as ethnicity and deprivation to understand their impacts further. Final publication of findings is anticipated in autumn 2018.

Children and young people’s mental health is a top priority for this Government and we are investing more than ever before across mental health.

We are making an additional £1.4 billion available until 2019/20, transforming services and giving access to 70,000 additional children and young people. Our recent Green Paper Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision aims to improve provision of services in schools, bolster links between schools and the National Health Service and pilot a four week waiting time for NHS services.

Since 2015/16, Local Transformation Plans have been put in place, covering every clinical commissioning group area in England, and these set out how local agencies will work together to improve children and young people’s mental health across the full spectrum of need.

A national programme of work is supporting local areas, including the extension and expansion of the use of evidence-based interventions, tackling stigma, improving data and information to inform greater transparency and accountability and developing a specialist and stronger workforce.

We have also committed to rolling out mental health first aid training for every secondary school by 2019 and to every primary school as part of the Green Paper.

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