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Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust sees 3,723 children receive treatment for mental health this year




Children’s mental health referrals have hit a five-year-high at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, with a maximum wait time of 89 weeks recorded for first appointment.

More than 5,800 children have been referred to the trust for mental health this year, the highest figure in the last five years.

The trust confirmed that the longest recorded wait from referral to first appointment to referral this year was 623 days (89 weeks).

More children need treatment for mental health issues
More children need treatment for mental health issues

The data obtained by Medical Negligence Assist via Freedom of Information Requests to all NHS mental health trusts also reveals that referrals for anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders have skyrocketed since 2019.

In the last year alone, the trust received 5,878 children’s mental health referrals – up from 4,473 in 2019 – that’s an increase of 31 per cent.

Anxiety, self-harm, suicidal ideation and depression were the most common referral reasons in the last year.

But children referrals for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) saw one of the biggest increases over the past five years, from 74 referrals between 2019/2020 to 118 in 2023/24 – up by 59 per cent.

The overall biggest increase was for anxiety referrals, which have skyrocketed from 1,258 in 2019/20 to 2,193 in the last year – an increase of 74 per cent.

Referrals for eating disorders also spiked this year with 276 children referred, up 43 per cent from 193 referrals in 2019/20.

Earlier this year, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network, said the demand for children and young people’s (CYP) mental health services is greater than ever.

Sean Duggen said: “The numbers with a probable mental disorder have increased markedly since 2017, as have contacts with NHS mental health services with the unfortunate knock-on impact that too many are waiting months if not years to access support.

“While services are seeing far more children and young people, the increase in prevalence, demand, complexity and severity of need means that services are often struggling to meet that demand.

“And this is having a knock-on impact on other parts of the NHS, including general practice, paediatric services, emergency services, the voluntary sector, schools and local authority services.

“Services, such as GPs, referring into specialist NHS CYP mental health services are often frustrated by the long waiting lists and the fact that their referrals are not accepted because of the scale of the demand.”

This year at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, 3,723 children have received treatment for mental health – that’s 63 per cent of those referred, well above the national average of 32 per cent.

The average waiting time from referral to first appointment was seven weeks, an improvement on the national average of five weeks.

However, the trust confirmed that the longest recorded waiting time this year (between April 2023 and April 2024) from referral to first appointment was an eye-watering 89 weeks.

A spokesperson for the trust explained that: “The length of wait is affected by several factors including incorrect coding of appointments, patient choice and a referral held open to a service pending completion of an intervention in a different mental health service.”

The rise in children’s mental health referrals, particularly for anxiety and depression have been attributed to numerous factors including social media, the effects of he Covid pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.

Mental health referrals for children with anxiety were by far the most common at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and have increased by 74 per cent in the last five years.

The increase reflects the wider national picture, with the latest NHS statistics showing more than 500 children a day in England are being referred to mental health services for anxiety.

The Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, said she was ‘horrified’ by the national figures.

In a statement in September this year, she said: “I was horrified to see the latest NHS statistics… for children and young people, each year is a significant portion of their young lives, so we need a fresh approach that intervenes much earlier to prevent children from reaching crisis point.”



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