@cantdothisnow1
I can sympathise with parents of gender dysphoric kids who are struggling to get mental health support for their children. It is similar to autism and mental health services. In many areas there is no pathway as CAMHS do not deal with mental health issues derived from autism either.
Yes, it’s rubbish for all.
Would be so much better if CAMHS could operate as a kind of sorting area for various in-depth pathways, looking at all comorbidities, rather than being ‘here’s your ASD paperwork and some charity leaflets, off you pop’ ‘we haven’t got the time/right kind of expert clinicians on staff, so you need to wait for adult services’ (happened to foster parents I know, who are caring for teens post SS removal due to CSA!) or ‘wait for gender services, we aren’t specialists’, or just put them in an assessment/holding pattern for self harm/ED until they reach crisis.
I’m not even sure what our local CAMHS realistically DO do, beyond ADHD diagnosis and medication clinics?
I know that locally, ASD diagnosis is supposed to go be via health visitor (to speech and language team) or school referral to Educational Psychologists funded by the LA.
CAMHS will only do assessments for kids who are refusing school (so already in crisis)
Anecdotes - My eldest was diagnosed with ASD/ADHD through CAMHS, my youngest has therapeutic counselling for poor mental health/negative self image but only because her referral was made by the intensive care team to their in-house psychosocial service (psychologists and psychotherapists who are supervised by CAMHS consultant psychiatrists but are located in the children’s hospital specifically to support seriously ill or injured children and their families).
Gender distressed middle got affirmative only (I’d even go as to call it grooming) counselling through the school counsellor (provided by charity Place2Be) which she has now completely refused on her own volition and instead speaks to a member of the student support team who is a qualified youth worker. We’ve found an ex GIDS
psychologist who we may yet use for video counselling but middle actually seems OK at the moment and quite angry about the school counsellor so likelihood of trusting a new person with a similar job title is quite small).
Seems to me that myriad kids are referred to CAMHS but CAMHS has neither the funding, staff nor appropriate ongoing treatment pathways to deal with anything much at all, whereas if it actually worked effectively Gender Distressed kids would greatly benefit from having comorbidities looked at and dealt with first or in parallel to the long assessment that GIDS (was designed to) offer.
Is it more difficult for clinicians to work together if it’s across trusts? If so, is that a funding pot thing or just a lack of familiarity with colleagues?
(just thinking aloud here really, my DD sees consultants in haemotology/oncology, immunology and immunogenetics (and has had appointments at ‘super clinics’ where there are two or more consultants from different specialisms in the same room) as well as accessing support with treatment side effects/ long term effects from the psychosocial team, the physiotherapy team, the play therapy team, the dental team and the dieticians and perhaps miraculously, it all seems to integrate remarkably well! Whereas CAMHS seems to be left to juggle quite disparate conditions largely alone, inevitably dropping almost all the balls, and GIDS may as well be on it’s own island, with ferry services only departing for discharge or endocrinology.
I suppose it’s because I have experienced the absolute best of the NHS for littlest, that contrast of that with CAMHS (eldest) and GIDS (which desisted middle never actually accessed) is so stark.
The differences between the support groups for parents/charity orgs is even more stark, but that’s a different topic.
Anyway, Jolyon’s ‘Fuck the NHS, fund private treatment for gender distressed kids abroad’ seems like a shoddy bit of neo liberal individualism.
Why not campaign for better, more timely treatment for all distressed adolescents, including those who hope to transition?
I know, anorexics, autists, self harmers and fire setters just ain’t fashionable are they? No one is playing YouTube celebrity Donkey Kong on Twitch for them, after all.