Sir, – While news of the growing waiting lists for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services is worrying it is only half the story ("Hundreds waiting over a year for Camhs services", News, May 24th). Many young people who need a service are refused at referral stage and never make it onto a waiting list.
The standard operating procedures of Camhs are inconsistently enforced and needlessly restrictive. Referrals are frequently refused as not appropriate; often the real distress is dismissed as simply “behavioural” or “emotional” difficulties and not relevant. Frequently such referrals are redirected to community services that don’t exist in any meaningful way, with waiting lists stretching over 18 months in some areas. This leaves suffering children lost with no supports.
Equally, my experience of Camhs has been one of inflexibility, meaning that getting to the top of the waiting list is still no guarantee of services – Camhs operate a policy of automatically discharging patients who do not attend.
This ignores the impact of the reality of mental health problems and the chaos they can cause, such as making it a genuine struggle to attend appointments. It also ignores the possible wider difficulties in a family; for children failure to attend means the child has not been brought to the appointment by the adults in their life. In a stressed and struggling family, multiple problems combine to make accessing a service difficult.
Such families need empathy, not rigidity.
This lack of accessibility is also seen in the fact that only in extreme circumstances will staff from Camhs leave their office to meet a child. A young person suffering from depression has difficulty leaving their house; a young person in chaos can be difficult to engage and needs to be met with flexibility, not rigidity. Engagement by the Camhs staff outside of the office, whether in a child’s house or in a neutral venue, can start to build relationships, giving a young person a better chance and helping prevent them falling through gaps in service provision.
Anyone who has attempted to make a referral to Camhs will have had a similar experience.
All of this adds up to the fact that money alone won’t fix mental health services. The standard operating procedures of Camhs also need review. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK
COSTELLO TD,
Green Party,
Dublin South Central,
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – The revelation that “Hundreds waiting over a year for Camhs services” is an example of another failure in the delivery of HSE services.
The Minister of State for Mental Health trots out the well-worn excuse about “difficulties filling posts with six consultant jobs currently vacant”.
This fallback position is becoming par for the course at this stage and will doubtless be repeated ad nauseam by different Ministers as it suits them! – Yours, etc,
TADHG McCARTHY,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.