Question: What is your opinion of the state of childeren's mental health in England

Nadine Mirza answered on 13 Nov 2018:

I think at the moment children’s mental health in England is being dubbed a “crisis”. I know that about 1 in 10 children or young people are impacted by a mental health difficulty or problem.
Now, when I look at it on a global scale it’s quite easy to say that England is still fairing quite well, being a developed country and more open to psychological measures like therapy and such.
But, considering the rest of the world is in shambles even if England is doing comparatively better, it’s still not so great. 100,000 children aged 14 alone are self harming. Children are developing anxiety, depression, anger issues and even eating disorders at younger and younger ages.
And I’ve seen how badly services are struggling. I work with a non-profit practice myself and we are really strained for time and resources. Children whose mental health is suffering often have to wait upwards of 2 years before they can get help- they’re stuck on a waiting list. Children also have problem which are bad but they aren’t “severe enough” for CAMHS. And you can’t blame CAMHS either. They’re trying to help the worst cases with the least amount of resources.
I still run some mental health and well being groups for that practice and even though we have doubled the amount of sessions we’ve run and let more and more kids into the groups it’s still not enough to get to everyone on time. It’s mostly because there’s an extreme funding issue.