Young People’s Mental Health

Helen Whately Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate on this very important subject, which often comes up in my constituency work. She makes a point about schools struggling to find support. That is certainly something I have experienced in my constituency, so I want to reiterate the point that primary and secondary schools know they have children who could really benefit from more specialist support and it is very hard for them to access it.

[Helen Hayes]

I agree with the hon. Lady completely. As we focus on prevention and early intervention, we need to think about early intervention in terms of age, as well as the stage of mental ill health.

As a consequence of the lack of early intervention support, the number of young people attending A&E because of a psychiatric condition has more than doubled since 2010. I have spoken to many doctors who tell me that when this happens and a seriously unwell young person presents at A&E needing a CAMHS in-patient bed, they frequently wait a very long time—sometimes days—for a bed to be identified. Often that bed is hundreds of miles away from home. One south London hospital has provided me with data that show a 37% year-on-year increase in the number of under-16s being seen in A&E with a mental health condition, and a 193% year-on-year increase in the number of those children being admitted to an in-patient bed.