On the 4th September our Director of Mental Health discussed our new research on mental health waiting times on Sky News.
The new research suggests that thousands of children and adolescents are on waiting lists for psychological therapies on the NHS.
The research showed that over 6,000 children and adolescents were waiting for psychological therapies as of June 2018 with the average number of young people awaiting therapy at 326. It was also found that 60.8% trusts had over 100 children and adolescents awaiting treatment
The average waiting time collated from the research was over three months, far from the government’s aim of four weeks outlined in the latest green paper released in December 2017 on ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’.
Our think tank, which has done this research twice now, found that 75% of trusts that responded to the first request for information have seen a rise in the number of young people accessing support and 50% of trusts that responded to both requests for information have seen a rise in waiting times.
Danny Bowman, Director of Mental Health for Parliament Street who did the research on behalf of our think tank said “This research shows that for too many children and young people suffering from mental illness help is not available in a timely manner and the situation in some areas is getting worse.
We simply cannot ignore the huge pain and suffering long waiting times and lists are causing for young people across Britain along with the growing economic and social costs being generated due to lack of support available.
We need to modernise and revitalize our approach to mental health, as failure to do so could lead to higher economic and social consequences.”
The research also found that 20.3% of NHS Trusts who provided CAMHS services did not hold the information in a retrievable format or at all.
