Nearly 2,000 young patients left waiting a year or more for specialist mental health care in Scotland

Nearly 2,000 children and teenagers have been left waiting for specialist mental health care for at least a year in Scotland, according to official figures branded “damning” by psychiatrists.

New NHS Scotland data has revealed that, at the end of September, there were 1,978 patients who had been waiting 52 weeks or more for a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) appointment.

That is more than double the 959 young people who were waiting that long the previous September – despite efforts by Nicola Sturgeon’s government to meet its own 2023 target for 90 per cent of young people to receive help within 18 weeks.

Ahead of the Holyrood Budget on Thursday, the figures prompted calls from service providers for a “radical transformation of our mental health services” enacted with the same zeal as the response to the coronavirus pandemic and with a focus on earlier interventions to prevent young people “giving up on their futures”.

According to the latest figures, there were a total of 11,816 young people waiting for an appointment by the end of September – just 78 per cent of them who had been seen within 18 weeks.

In addition to the nearly 2,000 waiting more than a year, there were also 1,780 young people waiting on the list for an appointment for between 36 and 52 weeks – and a further 2,858 who have been waiting for between 19 and 35 weeks.

Waiting times also differed across parts of the country – with only a third of patients in the NHS Dumfries and Galloway area seen within the 18-week target time.

Dr Helen Smith, chair of the CAMHS faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, said the long waits for help highlighted the “many problems” with these services “across the length and breadth of the country”.

“The fact that our vulnerable children and young people are still waiting to be seen is, frankly, not good enough,” Dr Smith said. “We need them to be able to access the right support at the right time, from the correct services.”

Meeting the Scottish Government’s target by 2023 will require sustained planning and investment, Dr Smith warned – particularly in the CAMHS workforce.

In February, Holyrood announced £120m in funding which it described as “the single largest investment in mental health in the history of devolution”. And in its NHS recovery plan, published in August, it pledged to ensure that 1 per cent of all frontline health spending in Scotland went specifically to mental health services for young people by the end of the parliamentary session.

The Scottish Government also pledged to provide funding for some 320 additional staff in CAMHS over the next five years, with the potential to increase the service’s capacity by over 10,000.

“The funding already promised is a good start but it is clear demand is not keeping up with supply,” Dr Smith said.

“We’re now calling on clarification as to when this promise will be urgently delivered, along with the training and delivery of 320 new children and adolescent mental health staff to address these dismal waiting time numbers.”

The Scottish Children’s Services Coalition (SCSC) – which represents those providing specialist care services to children – urged the Scottish Government to make Thursday’s Budget “for mental health for our children and young people”.

“For some time we have raised concerns over a potential lost generation of vulnerable children and young people whose mental health is being impacted even further by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is more important than ever that children can access the support they need, when they need it, irrespective of where they live,” an SCSC spokesperson said.

“To achieve this there must be a radical transformation of our mental health services, investing in specialist services and with a focus on preventing such problems arising in the first place and intervening early.

“This is a crisis we can overcome but it will require a similar energy and commitment to that demonstrated for Covid-19 if we are to achieve this and prevent many young people giving up on their futures.”

Holyrood’s minister for mental wellbeing Kevin Stewart was clear that “long waits for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services are not acceptable”, adding it was “encouraging to see progress towards meeting the waiting times target with eight out of 10 children and young people seen within 18 weeks of a referral”.

He added: “We do recognise that performance is mixed and there is more to be done particularly in those areas where there have been increases in the number of children and young people waiting for over a year for treatment – this is why support is being directed to those boards with the longest waits to clear backlogs by March 2023.

He pointed to an additional £40m in funding to improve CAMHS this year, £4.25m of which was directly focused at offering treatment to those already on the waiting list.

But Conservative mental health spokesman Craig Hoy called the figures “absolutely devastating”, adding: “On the SNP’s watch, Scotland is in the grip of a mental health crisis among our young people.

“Even prior to the pandemic, the SNP continually failed to meet crucial mental health waiting time targets. The Covid crisis has only exacerbated mental health issues for young people and urgent action is needed to avoid this situation getting even worse.

“It is shocking that almost 2,000 vulnerable young people have been waiting over a year to begin treatment. SNP ministers are simply not doing enough to ensure our health boards and local organisations have the resources needed to support those most in need.”

Additional reporting by PA