The number of children referred to emergency mental healthcare in England has risen by 10% in a year, with lengthy waiting lists for regular NHS care pushing more to crisis point.
There were 34,793 emergency, very urgent or urgent referrals to child and adolescent mental health services crisis teams between April and October 2024, analysis of official data by the mental health charity YoungMinds found. That compared with 31,749 in the same six-month period in 2023.
Many of the children requiring emergency care – some of them suicidal or seriously ill as a result of eating disorders – have been stuck on NHS waiting lists for months or, in the worst cases, several years.
The chief executive of YoungMinds, Laura Bunt, said the figures were concerning and showed that thousands of children urgently required help earlier to prevent them from becoming seriously unwell.
“Early support would help prevent many young people from becoming more unwell, but instead their mental health is deteriorating, pushing them into crisis and in some instances putting young people’s lives at risk,” she said. “This is a shocking betrayal of young people and their mental health.”
She said tweaks to the system would no longer be sufficient to tackle the crisis. “We need major reforms that address the root causes of why so many young people are struggling. It must also be easier for young people to get help for their mental health when they need it. To make this happen, the government must urgently fulfil its promise to roll out early support hubs in every community.”
The data analysis showed there were 4,424 new very urgent referrals to mental health crisis care teams between April and October 2024, up 13% from 3,912 in the same period in the previous year.
There were 24,886 new urgent referrals to crisis care teams between April and October, up 13% from 22,045 in the same period the year before. New emergency referrals were down 5% to 5,483.
Together, the figures show there was a 10% rise in urgent, very urgent and emergency care referrals in 2024, YoungMinds said.
The chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ child and adolescent faculty, Dr Elaine Lockhart, said the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of living crisis and a range of other factors had had a significant impact on children’s mental health in recent years.
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“We’ve seen a surge in the number of young people experiencing mental health problems partly because of this,” she said. “Mental health services help thousands of young people recover from mental ill-health every year, but they’re struggling to manage soaring demand due to staff shortages and a lack of resources. This is contributing to longer waiting lists and more young people reaching a crisis point before they can access the care they need.”
Separate data analysed by the PA Media news agency showed a 5% rise in a year in hospital admissions involving the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia.
The Department of Health and Social Care acknowledged that too many children and young people were waiting too long to access the mental health care they required. A spokesperson said: “We will recruit 8,500 additional mental health workers, provide young people with access to a specialist mental health professional in every school and a young futures hub in every community.”
