Mental Health Awareness Week: Commissioner concerned at access to services
13 May 2015
As Mental Health Awareness Week continues throughout the United Kingdom, the Commissioner’s office has raised concerns over access to appropriate mental health services for children in Scotland.
While Article 24 of the UNCRC stresses that children and young people have the right to the best healthcare possible, the Commissioner is worried that some in Scotland struggle to access appropriate mental health services. His concerns include:
- long waiting times
- inappropriate treatments
- too few staff
- a lack of service integration
- a lack of specialist facilities— from lower-level interventions to intensive psychiatric therapies.
For these reasons, the Commissioner feels that poor access to mental health services is one of the most serious concerns for the rights of children and young people in Scotland, and recently highlighted the issue to the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Concerns for particular groups
In addition to his general concerns about access to mental health services, the Commissioner is worried about access to young people who commit or are at risk of committing serious crime.
These children and young people tend to require specialist teams to provide outreach for them and their carers, and will sometimes find it difficult to access mainstream support from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
At the moment, there is only one Forensic CAMHS team in Scotland, despite the country’s high level of youth violence. Meanwhile, the local CAMHS service in the area containing the largest young offenders’ institutions is insufficiently resourced. For these reasons, the Commissioner believes significant investment is needed to improve CAMHS in Scotland.