The number of children referred to emergency mental healthcare in England has soared by more than 50% in three years, according to data laying bare the impact of lengthy waiting lists for regular NHS treatment.
There were 32,521 emergency and urgent referrals to child and adolescent mental health services crisis teams in 2022-23, analysis of official data by the Royal College of Psychiatrists revealed. In 2019-20, the year before the Covid pandemic, the figure was 21,242.
The increase means more than 600 mentally ill children a week are deteriorating to such a state that they have reached crisis point.
Many of the children requiring emergency care – some suicidal or seriously ill as a result of eating disorders – have been stuck on waiting lists for an average of five months, and in the worst cases as long as two years, the college said.
MPs and health leaders said the NHS figures exposed a “devastating explosion” of untreated severe mental ill health among children, and should be a wake-up call for the government. There was now a serious risk that the alarming surge in children reaching crisis point before being able to access help was becoming “the new norm”, they added.
“No one should have to watch their child’s mental health deteriorate while they wait for care,” the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dr Lade Smith, told the Guardian. “It’s completely unacceptable that this is the reality facing so many families.”
Ministers must take urgent action to provide targeted support to every child in need of mental healthcare and “turn the tide” on the country’s growing children’s mental health crisis, Smith said.
“We want to provide young people with effective care as soon as they need it, not once they’ve already developed a serious illness which could have been prevented,” she added.
“That’s why we need to see government focus on prevention and reversing the rising rates of mental illness, as well as ensuring sufficient resourcing of specialist services.”
