Depressed children deserve better treatment
Leader
Sunday July 23, 2006
The Observer
When children fall into a state of depression or show the tell-tale marks of
self-harm, their anxious parents need fast access to specialist mental
health advice. But as our story shows today, such expertise is simply not
available to thousands of families across the country.
Today we reveal that the government knows that it will be unable to meet its
targets for providing care to these most vulnerable children and young
people when they fall ill and that there is a huge variation in provision
across England. In the County Durham and Tees Valley region, only 40 per
cent of parents could expect a rapid response if their teenager was in
mental turmoil. This is shameful. So, too, is the fact that one-quarter of
16- and 17-year-olds needing psychiatric care are likely to end up in adult
wards - environments which can be both dangerous and disturbing for a
teenager.
Children's and young people's psychiatric problems have always been
neglected, an indication of our failure to accept that the young can suffer
psychological turmoil. But, in fact, the evidence is that mental health
problems are on the increase among our children. Around one million
under-18s are estimated to experience some mental health problems, and over
the last few years there have been increases in self-harm, conditions
related to anxiety and conduct problems connected with autism and severe
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
What is obvious to those in the field is that deficits incurred by the large
teaching hospitals in their relentless drive to lower waiting lists for
surgery are now threatening mental health services, stalling development.
The government must first of all acknowledge this and then urgently review
what is happening to child and adolescent mental health teams with the aim
of providing care that is more family-centred.
But to push mental health up the agenda will also require political will.
Provision of therapy or counselling to an adolescent with crippling
depression is as important as provision of hip or cataract operations. Yet,
at the moment, these young people are having to wait twice as long as those
on the average hospital waiting list. For a young person in turmoil, that is
quite a hard discrepancy to understand.
Link:- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1827087,00.html
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The devastating shortfall in care for young people with mental health
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See link:- http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1826979,00.html
Charity launches study of childhood in the UK:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1827319,00.html
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