Why young people need better mental health services

By Will Anderson - BYL Disability Officer

Content note: suicide

As disability officer I’m proud to introduce Bristol Young Labour’s campaign to improve mental health services for children and young people. The campaign is calling for action under three headings.

Investment

Last year, 12 leading mental health bodies including the charity Young Minds called on the Government to take immediate action to address the rising levels of mental ill-health and to invest in mental health services. It was also revealed that over half of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) planned to reduce the proportion of their budget they spend on mental health for 2016-17. Bristol-based charity Off the Record has seen a dramatic rise from around 400 young people seeking help for mental health problems in 2010 to more than 3,000 a year in 2017.

Despite the government promising action it was revealed in 2018 by The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ that in England, 62 per cent of mental health trusts reported a lower income than five years ago. We want the government to invest nationally in mental health services for children and young people.

Education

We are calling also for educators to be given the proper resources to support young people. We’ve all seen headlines about young people who have tragically taken their own lives whilst attending schools, colleges, and Universities in our city.

Under the current government teachers, teaching assistants, tutors, and support staff are being asked to do more with less. Our institutions need to be given the proper tools to look after children and young people in our city and refer them to appropriate support if necessary.

In addition to this we are calling for an end to the stigma that surrounds mental health in our country. Important work has been done on this and reports suggest that there has been some degree of progress but more work needs doing. The stigma in society will only end when nationally every school has a programme to help develop all children and young people’s emotional and social wellbeing.

Rights

Bristol Young Labour also believes that young people need to have a meaningful and important voice in changes to their services and we want to see this done through the expansion of initiatives such as the NHS youth forums. We also want to see health bodies doing further work with service user and campaign groups to ensure the voices of young people are recognised.

In addition to this we want to ensure that more resources are provided to help young people understand their rights when accessing mental health services.

What can you do?

At our events we are going to be asking people to pose with our campaign sign. We would love, if you feel comfortable, to have your picture taken with it and publicly express support through the #bylMentalHealth hashtag.