CHILDREN struggling with mental health issues because of long lockdowns have to be near suicidal before any help reaches them, a leading GP has said.
Dr Shaba Nabi, based in Bristol, said, “It would be easier for me to become a supermodel than to get a child seen by CAMHS [the NHS’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service].
“We are now living in a weird world where a primary school age child can repeatedly self-harm and that’s not considered enough for mental health support. And even when children meet the criteria, the waiting lists are very long.”
Illustrating the pandemic’s impact on her children, Nabi told The Telegraph that her daughters – aged 12 and 11 – were so affected by the pandemic that they were overcome by anxiety and that curtailed the family’s first post-lockdown entertainment trip to a cinema earlier this month.
She said, “I feel such sadness and despair about this. I can’t see when things will change because, in a child’s life, it is such a long time to go without going to school, seeing their friends, going places and mixing with other people, so for them, this [social isolation] is normal now.
“I am one of the privileged few and my kids are still suffering terribly. It is unimaginable to think of the suffering faced by children less fortunate than mine.”
She added there were several other families facing a similar ordeal and as a GP, she was also struggling to get help for her patients who found it very difficult to access support.
Health minister Nadine Dorries was questioned at a hearing of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee about concerns that too many referrals from GPs for help from CAMHS were not being accepted.
Dorries rejected claims that 140,000 children were being denied help in a year and said the figure included those who got only one appointment.
According to the minister, too many kids were being referred to the mental health services when “other tools” to support mental well-being might be more suitable.
Kulsuma Aktergetty images