Since at least 1999, we as a society have known that one in 10 children in England, Scotland and Wales aged 5 to 15 has a clinically recognisable mental disorder. Yet more then half of the 250 GPs questioned in a survey for Norwich Union Healthcare recently claim their local NHS mental health services are still poor or very poor, and nearly all of them believe not enough is being done by the NHS to help teenagers with mental health problems.
So what is going wrong? The latest official figures show a 19 per cent rise in spending on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services between 2004/5 and 2005/6, and an 11 per cent increase in staffing levels. However, this is a slower rate of growth than in the previous year, and must be seen in the context of a relatively low starting point. The result is that, last year, we set aside just £46 per child for their mental health needs. That is less than I spend on my gym membership each month.
One of the most worrying things about this shortage of quality mental health services for children and young people is that doctors are being forced to resort to drugs instead. Over two thirds of the GPs surveyed said they had prescribed antidepressants to teenagers when psychological therapies or better social care would have been a more appropriate response.
When, in June, Prozac became the first drug in the UK to be licensed to treat depression in children aged eight and above who suffer from moderate to severe depression, the proviso was that they must have already failed to respond to psychological therapy and that they must also be signed up for a talking therapy.
At the time, experts expressed fears that GPs might end up over-prescribing the drug to young people. The latest research suggests that, with family doctors facing a growing number of young patients presenting with mental health problems and having insufficient or poor services to refer them to, the provisos are being ignored and the experts' fears are already been realised.