Mental Health

Mental Health Services Denied to 23% of Minors

By Samantha Page | Update Date: Apr 12, 2016 06:59 AM EDT

CentreForum has released a report that is telling of the state of mental health services for young people today. The evidence-based research group hopes the shocking findings in the report will serve as a wake-up call to mental health service providers to improve on their promises to treat those who suffer from such conditions.

According to The Huffington Post, the report reveals that Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) turn away 23% of children and underage people referred to them by concerned parties. Some of the reasons behind which are that their conditions did not seem serious enough or the type of service CAMHS offered was not appropriate for them.

The CentreForum report continues to find shocking treatment. If a young person was suffering from anorexia, his or her Body Mass Index (BMI) had to meet a certain number before being considered for support. If a young person has only had one suicidal thought in their life, this apparently does not make them eligible for mental health care. If a young person's condition is not severe enough to disrupt his or her school life, family life, and other relationships, he or she would not be accepted into care.

CentreForum also discovered the wait time for services has more than doubled since 2011-2012, with waiting times reaching up to two and a half years. The average waiting time for these services was ten months.

Former mental health minister and now chairman of CentreForum's commission on child and adolescent mental health, Norman Lamb says that despite the knowledge of the importance of intervention in mental health cases, CentreForum's findings did not reflect this, The Guardian reports.

Aside from this, the report also found a north-south region divide in regional expenses for mental health care. Northern regions of the UK were discovered to have spent more on care for minors while the south lacked beds to admit patients, reaching 26 and 52 days without beds in the south-east and south-west areas respectively.

Due to a rise in mental health problems amongst minors, Luciana Berger, mental health minister, calls on Prime Minister David Cameron to take responsibility for this current lack on children's care in mental health. The government responded by saying it's doing its job, with the budget being made available in the next five years to fund clinics and hospitals in every area in the country, allowing them to offer services they were not able to before.

In a recent report by the Office of National Statistics, suicide is behind 14% of deaths in boys aged 5-19, making it the most common cause, and 9% in girls, making it the second cause next to traffic accidents.

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