A proactive approach to children's mental health support

Dr Simon Opher MP is the Labour MP and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Health. Prior to becoming an MP, he spent 30 years as a local GP in Stroud. In this blog for Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Opher outlines what approach he thinks the Government should take to improving children’s mental health, focusing on early intervention and proactivity.

There is nothing more important than children’s mental health. At the same time, it is hard to imagine an area of medicine that is more marginalised and underfunded. 

Last year, the Children’s Commissioner for England said that she thought that there was ‘a crisis in children’s mental health and the services needed to support them’.

My experience as a GP, and more recently as an MP, is that little has changed. Demand for services is increasing and providers cannot keep up. Waiting times for mental health support are often over 6 months. Services for autism and ADHD are effectively non-existent, with waits of 3-4 years reported. The number of children not attending school has also reached alarming proportions largely as a result of mental health issues.

The government is beginning to make a difference. So far, the two key initiatives are the addition of mental health support through 111 service, and the Government has outlined plans to provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school. By their nature, though, these improvements are reactive rather than preventative. Place2Be has had a major impact on children in the schools where they work. 78% of children aged 4-11 who worked with a Place2Be mental health counsellor showed improved mental health after targeted sessions, and the figure for older children is even more impressive. This is crucial work and underpins what we are trying to achieve in Parliament.

In Stroud, GPs have managed to work with local health and social care specialists, as well as councils, to use funding from Gloucestershire NHS to provide in-house counselling and mentoring sessions for young people with a wait time of just weeks. In addition, they are offering mental health first aid certificate training in local schools and colleges. This will enable young people to help themselves and others if they are struggling.

Where we can, we need to be pro-active rather than re-active.

More fundamentally, we need a more equal society.

I think that the real role for this government is tackling inequality – which children and young people, can, I think, experience more acutely than adults.  Those who are experiencing higher levels of poverty and social disadvantage are more likely to develop mental health problems (due to the stress and strain associated with financial insecurity), limited access to resources, social isolation, and a sense of powerlessness.

This week I will be promoting the work of Place2Be, using Children's Mental Health Week as an opportunity to help inform and focus minds on what can be achieved.

We have an opportunity here to begin to turn around, and we need to take it.