The need for better mental health care for children and young people has “never been higher”, a consultant psychiatrist has warned.
The Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) has for years been dogged with complaints about long waiting lists and poor outcomes among patients.
The Irish College of Psychiatrists have said the service is in urgent need of reform and their spokesperson, Dr Patricia Byrne, said there should be urgent changes in the governance of CAMHS.
“Both the Maskey Report and the Mental Health Commission Report show that the HSE has repeatedly failed over the last 20-years to put in a good system of governance and to adequately resource, fund or recruit or run CAMHS services,” she told The Hard Shoulder.
“Leading to really poor outcomes for children and families - who have never needed our services more.
“We’re [in an] epidemic of mental health difficulties where it’s now estimated that one-in-five young people of school going age have a mental health disorder.
“It has never been higher, the need has never been greater.”
Dr Byrne described CAMHS as a service that has “never been properly developed and planned”.
“For a long time, there was not a recognition that children and adolescents could have severe mental illness - and that’s what CAMHS deals with,” she said.
“It deals with very moderate to severe disorders that can be life threatening for young people.”
A doctor and a patient. Picture by: Ingram Publishing / Alamy. 23 June 2024Part of the solution, Dr Byrne believes, would be for teams within CAMHS to recruit a ‘clinician manager’ that would be responsible for “simple things” that would help both staff and patients.
“Such as organising leave to ensure that there’s a minimum staffing at all times,” she said.
“Looking at how the team is functioning; are there children being lost to follow, how are our wait lists doing?
“Where are the areas we’re doing well and where are the areas we’re not?
“So, that person then would have the time and resources and specific management responsibility to be able to develop and lead that team.”
Dr Byrne added that there are “many people on our clinical teams who would be fantastic at doing that role.”
Main image: A sign for a CAMHS clinic. Picture by: Alamy.com
