Early support cuts blamed for rise in mental health hospital admissions

Answering a parliamentary question, health minister Norman Lamb revealed that in 2013/14, emergency departments admitted 47 children and young people aged 18 or younger with a mental health crisis every day.

The annual total of 17,278 admissions is almost double 2010/11’s figure of 9,328.

In addition, the number of young people admitted to a hospital bed increased from 2,705 to 5,367 over the same period.

Sarah Brennan, chief executive of children's mental health charity YoungMinds, said the figures are “deeply worrying” and laid the blame at cuts to community-based early intervention support for young people with mental health issues.

She said: “YoungMinds has warned for several years that cuts to early intervention services and community-based children’s mental health services would put increased pressure on crisis services.

“What is needed now is not a sticking plaster around crisis services but investment in early intervention. Support needs to be provided to children, young people and their families when they start to struggle, so that we can prevent the intense suffering that a mental health crisis and entrenched mental illness can cause.”

She says that although some emergency departments had made improvements to the way they support children with mental health issues “these are the few and not the many”.

“With the much-publicised pressure on emergency departments it is very concerning that so many children and young people are turning up in a mental health crisis to highly stressful environments,” Brennan added.

Dr Gillian Rose, vice chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists child and adolescent faculty said: “These figures confirm a worrying trend for increasing emergency presentations of children and adolescents with mental health issues. Children and young people's wellbeing is being impacted by cuts in community early intervention services.”

Earlier this month members of the home affairs select committee criticised the continued use of police cells to detain young people under the Mental Health Act. Despite calls by ministers to end the practice, committee members found that too often cells are having to be used due to a lack of alternative places of safety.

These latest figures were revealed in a parliamentary answer to a question on the issue tabled by shadow public health minister Luciana Berger.