Child Mental Health
Journalist briefing, August 2007
Background
Children's mental health is the strength and capacity of children's minds to grow and develop with confidence and enjoyment. It consists of the capacity to learn from experience and to overcome difficulty and adversity. It is about physical and emotional well-being, the ability to live a full and creative life and the flexibility to give and take in friendships and relationships. (Young Minds charity)
Commentary on the Mental Health Act 2006
Children in families where someone - for example a parent, sibling, partner of a parent - is suffering from mental ill health are likely to have significant unmet needs. They should automatically be subject to an assessment by social services.
The Bill now requires statutory advocacy services to be set up to ensure that independent mental health advocates are available to certain patients. However, the NSPCC considers that all children and young people under the age of 18 detained against their will in hospital wards should have a statutory right of access to independent advocacy to ensure their rights are safeguarded.
Key Points
The NSPCC, which offers a range of child-centred therapeutic services, is concerned about the decline in the mental health of British adolescents. It is estimated by the Mental Health Foundation that rates of depression and anxiety among young people have increased by 70 per cent in the past 25 years. (1)
Mental health services for children and young people are usually provided through the NHS Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and frequently operate a very high threshold for providing services, such that children and young people have to present with an identified mental health condition in order to receive a service. This means that many abused children do not receive a service, despite the fact that their emotional and mental health is often impaired by their experience. Although CAMHS have received considerably more investment in recent years, waiting lists can be long and they remain severely under-resourced. (2)
The NSPCC is campaigning for the government to provide funding for comprehensive child-centred therapeutic services, provided within the community, so that all children who have been abused have access to such a service if they are assessed as requiring it.
Child abuse is widely regarded as a cause for mental health problems in adult life but there has been little research on the links between abuse and mental health problems in children and young people. The NSPCC considers, however, that abuse of any kind suffered by a child or young person can have a negative impact on their emotional and mental well-being.
Self-Harm
In its broadest sense, "self-harm" describes a wide range of things that young people do to themselves in a deliberate and usually secret way, which are damaging. (3) This includes:
- Cutting behaviours,
- burning, banging, hair-pulling
- self poisoning
It is important to recognise that self-harm is a symptom of underlying mental or emotional distress. The majority of young people who self- harm report say that they are not attempting suicide but 'trying to cope' with other problems and show that 'something is wrong'. Factors can include:
- feeling isolated
- academic pressures
- suicide or self-harm by someone close to the young person
- family problems, including parental separation or divorce
- being bullied
- low self esteem
Key Statistics
One in five British children has a mental health problem in any given year and 10 per cent at any one time. Disorders affect 10.4 per cent of boys aged 5-10, rising to 12.8 per cent of those aged 11-15, and 5.9 per cent of girls aged 5-10, rising to 9.65 per cent in the 11-15 age range. (4)
In 2005/06, 14,463 children and young people spoke to ChildLine about mental health issues.
- 1,609 girls and 476 boys called about depression and mental health
- 1,854 girls and 158 boys about self-harm
- 1,009 girls and 256 boys about suicide
- 631 girls and 94 boys about anorexia
The numbers of young people who self-harm in the UK - up to one in fifteen - are among the highest in Europe. (5) In 2005-06 ChildLine counselled over 2000 children on self-harm.
Ends
References
1. Between the ages of four and twenty years old - Mental Health Foundation (1999) 'Bright Futures, Promoting Children and Young People's Mental Health.'
2. Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) (2005) Making Every Child Matter: Messages from inspections of children's social services. (pp.24-25) London, CSCI.
3. The first UK National Inquiry into Young People and Self-Harm, 'Truth Hurts', was conducted by the Mental Health Foundation and Camelot in March 2006. This was the definition used in the inquiry and looks solely at self-harm without the intention of suicide. ChildLine's definition of self-harm is consistent with this.
4. Mental Health of Children and Young People in Great Britain, Department of Health (2004)
5. National Institute for Clinical Excellence, cited in Truth Hurts - Report of the National Inquiry into Self Harm among Young People, 2006
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