Young Minds have released a report titled Deconstructing the system: young people's voices on mental health, society and inequality.
You can read their report here: https://www.youngminds.org.uk/about-us/reports-and-impact/deconstructing-the-system/highlight-tour/
Their report highlights five focus areas for change, being:
- social structures and systems
- mental health services
- social inequality and discrimination
- global issues
- social pressures and attitudes
The NCPS are gladdened to see that the second area of focus - mental health services - calls for a "more accessible, stable and high-quality health system", with the hope being that "everyone who needs support can access better quality mental health support".
Young people are asking for, amongst other things, shorter waiting times and a wider range of treatment options, which is something the NCPS are specifically campaigning for through our Access to Counselling for Every Child campaign, as well as through our Direct Access to Counselling campaign.
"Many young people expressed they want to see more treatment options beyond CBT, and would like to be able to access early intervention without any thresholds"
The report also talks about young people's experiences with waiting times, noting that "58% of young people said they were dissatisfied with how long they had to wait", and "59% reporting worsening mental health while waiting to be seen".
There are also huge differences for young people from marginalised communities:
"For gay and Trans young people, there are bigger gaps in facing crisis and seeing a crisis team, with higher rates of suicide attempts and lower rates of crisis team contact. Mixed-race and other ethnicities also had high rates of suicide attempts, while Asian young people had low crisis team contact despite high suicide attempt rates."
"Trans young people were more likely to wait longer for mental health support. 13% said they were still waiting after a year, compared to 8% of non-Trans young people."
"Young Black people and those who preferred not to state their ethnicity were the most likely ethnic groups to be waiting more than a year for support."
The report also calls for more culturally competent mental health services, with more sensitivity towards each person's culture and identity.
Meg Moss, Head of Policy & Public Affairs at the NCPS, says "this report from YoungMinds is brimming with important and valuable information, and I hope that the Government will fully consider what young people are asking for. It's absolutely vital that we base our work around the needs of the people that are going to be accessing the services; otherwise, what's the point? I'm really pleased to see that there are calls for shorter waiting times and access to a wider range of treatment options. With a workforce of over 60,000 counsellors and psychotherapists across the UK, offering a hugely diverse range of modalities (or ways of working), we could absolutely solve those two problems almost overnight".
