I suffered with serious depression - I know how crippling it can be

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oates writes about his personal experience with mental health issues, and says it is unacceptable that thousands of children face a lack of provision.



Anyone who has witnessed friends or family members suffering with mental ill health through childhood and adolescence, or who has suffered from it themselves, will know how crippling it can be at such a critical stage in life.

For much of the time when I was growing up, mental health was pretty much a taboo subject. Few people talked openly about mental illness; it was too often a personal burden, not to be shared, understood or tackled but to be hidden away even from those closest to you.

Much has changed since then, thanks to the amazing work of mental health charities and the many activists and campaigners who have helped break down taboos and push mental health up the political agenda, alongside MPs, such as my colleague Norman Lamb who has been such a tireless champion for people suffering with mental ill health.

But despite the welcome changes in attitudes, the scale of the problem remains huge. Tragically, more than 80,000 children and young people in Great Britain are seriously depressed, according to research published by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, and it is estimated that only a quarter of children and adolescents affected by mental health problems are getting specialist help.

Mental health problems for children and adolescents which go unaddressed can lead to a whole range of further problems, including increased absenteeism, lack of attention in school, deteriorating educational performance, behavioural problems and, in the worst cases, children dropping out of school and becoming caught up in the criminal justice and social care systems. Even where such problems do not manifest themselves, a failure to treat mental health problems at this stage can lead to bigger problems in later life.

So what can we do to address the problem? The first thing is to ensure that children and adolescents can get support at an early stage before mental health problems develop. The most effective way to achieve this is through school-based counselling services, which children and adolescents can access easily and in a familiar environment.

National school-based counselling services already operate in Wales and in Northern Ireland but in England the provision of counselling services remains a matter for individual schools. Inevitably, given the pressures on schools budgets, which are only likely to grow, this has led to very patchy provision with many young people unable to access in-school services.

Children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) are already severely stretched and consequently young people without access to school-based counselling can wait months until they get any support at all.

The establishment of a national school-based counselling service in England would help reduce the strains and costs on CAMHS. Mental health problems could be addressed earlier, reducing the likelihood of them developing into more severe mental health problems. Above all it could help improve the mental health of young people and promote their wellbeing.

However, alongside this necessary move we need to do much more to strengthen CAMHS to ensure that it provides the services so desperately needed. Waiting lists are far too long and the education policy unit’s commission on young people’s mental health shows that a quarter of all referrals from schools to CAMHS are currently declined. It is hard to overstate the distress and anguish of parents when they are unable to gain access to desperately needed services for their child.

My own experience has made me passionate about addressing this issue. During my school years, in the 1980s I suffered with serious depression. There were no in-school counselling services to support me and, as a result, the mental health problems I had went unaddressed and mental ill health dogged me throughout my twenties.

In 2017, when we understand so much more about mental health and its impact on people’s lives, it is unacceptable that thousands of children and adolescents in England continue to face the same lack of provision.

Lord Oates is a Liberal Democrat peer and former chief of staff to Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister