Shortchanging the next generation’s mental health is a false economy the country can ill afford

Analysis: A deluge of reports have laid bare the scale of the mental health crisis in England but Alex Matthews-King says it is all too easy to lose sight of the real cost if we leave children to suffer unsupported

Behavioural and emotional disorders like depression and ADHD affect around four children in every English classroom (Getty/iStock)

In the most in-depth stock take of young people’s wellbeing for more than a decade, an NHS report found one in eight children have a mental health disorder and numbers are rising.

The findings throw into stark relief the challenges that must still be overcome, despite rising public and political awareness.

Just hours earlier the children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, warned in her own review of a “vast gap” between what NHS services are providing and what is needed.

Early treatment and support can prevent people reaching crisis point. Yet young people’s mental health gets just one-third of the funding of adult services, and over a third of young people referred to specialist support are never admitted, the commissioner’s report warns.

Theresa May’s government has made big pledges on putting mental health on an equal footing to physical conditions, and the chancellor snatched headlines with a promise of £2bn for mental health in the Budget – allocated from the £20bn already promised the NHS.

But economists looking into this commitment said it does not increase mental health’s share of the NHS’s rising budget – despite the sector being an area that has been grossly underinvested in historically.

In its child and adolescent mental health green paper last year, the government proposed reducing its waiting time target from six to four weeks for young people referred to specialist support – despite only half of children currently being seen within the existing target. While a pledge to increase mental health support in schools will see teachers or other staff becoming mental health leads, and working with specialist services to spot struggling children and refer them earlier.

But charities said the £300m plan was a “let down” and warned it would leave “hundreds of thousands of children unsupported”.

A third report was published on Thursday, this time by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which showed that mental health conditions at all ages already cost the UK economy £94bn a year – nearly half of this from lower employment and productivity.

But pounds, pence and statistics don’t do justice to the human cost.

In every school classroom in England there will be three pupils, on average, contending with emotional or behavioural disorders that are causing their home life, relationships or academic performance to suffer.

In sixth forms, where nearly a quarter of young women are experiencing conditions like anxiety or body dysmorphic disorder, more than half of this group will have self-harmed or attempted suicide in the past year.

At such a formative period these conditions cast a long shadow into the future, but experts like Professor Russell Viner of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health warn these numbers are just the tip of “the mental health crisis that engulfs our country”.

“Worse still,” he adds, “there are likely to be many more who are yet to be diagnosed.”

When ministers are next counting up their investment in mental health, they should remember that shortchanging the next generation, even unwittingly, is a false economy the country can ill afford.