What exactly are CAMHs supposed to treat?

[WhiteC0sm05]

Seems to be very little in our area.

@TravellingSpoon our BUPA cover had a list of private consultant psychiatrists who were approved. Alternatively you can go to somewhere like The Priory for an assessment.

With the benefit of hindsight you can also google some of the partners/charities CAMHS use. If you Google the therapists names you may find they appear on websites - either their own or those of private hospitals or therapy groups.

Those people have been vetted by the NHS so may be a safe bet.

I find it shocking that camhs/GPS refuse to refer privately on the basis of not knowing private practitioners outcomes when so many of them are actually in the service. Also if young people are discharged after the first of six sessions they don't actually know the outcome where their own practitioners are concerned.

CAMHS treat themselves to their salaries every month without having to do anything at all, in my experience.

I think that's absolute tosh @gypsywater and @fairgame84

DS went to CAHMS for anxiety. We didn’t wait long for the appointment. He then had CBT and he was referred to be assessed for autism. Was diagnosed with Aspergers.
I found them excellent.

@OhTheRoses Well obviously, I didnt think you would agree

@ohtheroses

I certainly wouldnt feel comfortable signposting private care.

Can you imagine the uproar if people starting saying i cant offer you that in cahms but pay me xyz and ill do it on the side, or you can pay my friend to.

Same reason why drug reps can no longer give us free things, so that our choices arent impacted.
Opens up patients to financial exploitation, and staff to accusations

From experience some of our local private providers have very poor standards, so im loathe to "recommend" any private setting where its not regulated, thus my advice would be no more than the lists that are available on the internet?

CAHMS are massively under resourced like many areas of health care and there is a massive increase in referrals. I have a friend who is in a CAHMS team and they do get a significant number of referrals for children with “generalised anxiety disorder” where there is no real underlying mental health illness or disorder - more just a case of lack of resilience and coping skills - which is not great either but does not need specialist MH services. So fewer availability for those who really need it.

DD went to GP in Feb for a referral, was assessed by CAMHS in April, and is currently receiving counselling for anxiety. I wasn't expecting much because I'd heard the waiting lists were long and that children don't get support unless they're seriously ill (which she's not). However I've been impressed with the speed with which DD has been seen.

Doggy I don’t think that is true. Given the lack of care my son is getting I really don’t think hoards rocking up with little wrong with them are going to be handed treatment on a plate. That said given the clear ignorance our case worker is showing maybe it does happen but resources wrongly diverted are thus the fault of staff not its patients.

@gatr there has to be a point where if resources are inadequate on the NHS and some people, say 25%, can pay for services that effective signposting is put in place. Here is a list of NHS therapists with private practices. So much better than "find any old cove off the internet". Or be honest and means test it and charge me if my portion of tax sent to the NHS doesn't cover CAMHS. But the government needs to be honest about what my taxes do fund.

@gypsywater may I say that from birth my children have heard DH, all their grandparents, family friends, teachers, people in shops, cleaners, etc, call me by my first name so they are quite used to it. Indeed DS has only heard dd call me mum (Or mummy) and vice versa. As littlies they'd have thought it most peculiar if a grown up stranger had called me mum.

Thanks Chiribaya, those links are really useful.

Damned if I know.

We first visited the GP about DD1s behaviour in 2013. 7 years later and we’ve had every referral to CAMHs returned with ‘helpful’ suggestions about how to manage her behaviour. The underlying implication is that unless we submit evidence to say we have done these suggestions which are books, charity run courses, workshops, family worker etc that they won’t consider any further referrals. These suggestions are not helpful because it is so broad it doesn’t address the underlying cause of the behaviour.

In the meantime, I have sustained so many injuries from my child requiring medical treatment (a burn for instance took one a&e visit and many follow up appts at the gp surgery). This, I have no doubt adds costs to the NHS.

We’ve gone private and at the first session they saw that she was highly anxious and likely ASD so we are funding the further assessments privately.

It seems to me that now is the time to be teaching our children how to cope with their mental health so that they become less of a burden on the Adult mental health services later on. Surely that investment is worth it? I say this as someone who has finished 20 sessions of CBT via the NHS and am now on a 2 year waiting list for specialist counselling (Run by a non profit).

And the ‘Mum might like to read these books’ etc it’s infuriating, why acknowledge the family of having a mum, dad and siblings to then place the entire weight on ‘Mum’.

Thanks to those that have posted links - I’ve come across a few really helpful things

Camhs have a specialist autism service here, it does vary by ccg. Once we aged out at 18 everything really interesting the a&e mental health assessment team should be on my Christmas card list! She's even known to local police, if she goes off her meds there's no knowing what will happen

I have a friend who is in a CAHMS team and they do get a significant number of referrals for children with “generalised anxiety disorder” where there is no real underlying mental health illness or disorder - more just a case of lack of resilience and coping skills

That's what they think for every young person - this is incompetency and irresponsible. My son has psychosis and he suffered badly from it, our GPs referred him, he has seen two different psychologists both provided reports to show he has symptoms of psychosis. With these referral and report, this camhs lady still say he doesn't have psychosis, they are not even medical trained. This is absolutely irresponsible and disgusting.

I have never seen my husband cry, I cried my eyes out purely because we knew my son need medication to help him function but we were not able to get any because this non medical trained camhs lady decided that he hasn't got a problem.

My son eventually got his life back after seeing a private psychiatrist after weeks of waiting (first available appointment). He was put on med straight away. Our psychiatrist was absolutely appalled by how we were treated. We are so lucky ro have jobs still to pay for this privately.

What your friend said absolutely disgust me.

In my experience CAMHS must be the only branch of medicine where they offer you a treatment, acknowledge it isn't accessible to the child when it doesn't work and then propose to discharge effectively without any treatment and no improvement. Then when you complain about the proposed discharge they instead offer you more of what they already acknowledge isn't accessible.
If funding is a problem why are they throwing funds away by foisting unworkable inaccessible treatments on children by PMHW instead of referring the child to a psychiatrist/psychologist for medication or other input.
The psychiatrist who saw dd just three weeks after the PMHW proposed to discharge her said her anxiety and depression was severe and needed medicating so what reasoning did the PMHW have for discharge? It's completely irrational.

I have just reread this entire thread. So many families suffering.

Almost every post from someone working in CAMHS has referred to how it is so very hard for them due to resources and the wrong government.

It is notable that there has been little or no empathy for any family who is struggling to get care for their child or young person.

The response of those in CAMHS speaks volumes and says everything anyone needs to know about the parlous state of the service.

It’s frustrating when currently our children’s wards are full of Camhs children because they are not supported from home. We often have to wait days for camhs to see them. Meanwhile we can’t seem to get through to them that our beds are being blocked by these patients. Yes that sounds awful, but an acute hospital bed is not the right place for these patients, they need specialist help which we are not trained to provide. We aren’t mental health nurses, we don’t have any training to deal with camhs patients yet we are expected to administer doses of IM drugs to calm them down, look after patients on section, care for teenagers who should be in tier 4 beds for weeks or months on end (because there is a shortage of beds), on a 1-1 or 2-1 basis. We don’t have enough staff or resources to cope and morale is so low. We have teenagers wreck the wards and regularly abscond as well as try and commit suicide on the wards amongst sick babies and children and their parents. We’ve had families who are terrified. We have had the security and police in numerous times.

What are we supposed to do? We get told it’s not a camhs problem, we’ll see them on Monday. Oh their camhs worker isn’t in today. We’ll have a discharge meeting in a week. It’s not just camhs, it’s also social care.

I feel sorry for these children and I feel sorry for my colleagues. The patients are so let down by the lack of support.

It's a great shame that what it costs to keep young people on acute children's wards can't be recharged to the MH Trusts.

Although perhaps don't get me on the topic of heavy handed a&e conduct who when advised my dd was safety netted by a private consultant psychiatrist and when an mh liaison assessment was available in a&E (a&e staff didn6know people on hospital premises could assess 16/17 year olds) wanted to insist she was admitted to an acute ward pending CAMHS assessment before discharge. They tried entirely to violate my dd's rights when she had capacity.

I find it hard to believe the acute hospital had that much money to throw up the wall but there was no money for therapy. Join the dots re funding.

I don't think there has been any lack of empathy for the dc.
There has been clear recognition that the service isn't working well for many people.
No one is going to feel good about turning desperate families away.
In fact people have talked about leaving the service because of the level of support they were able to provide.
People burn out because of the tension between the service they want to provide and the one they are able to.
Well workers become sick trying to square that circle, how much more empathy do you want from people.
It isn't a situation I would be prepared to put myself in in the first place.

The empathy I’d like would be in the form of sympathy from ds’s case worker when I cry and tell her how desperate we are, some words just once acknowledging how he is struggling, has suffered, some advice ..... some treatment would be good too. All we’ve had is lost paperwork, discharging and 3 websites ad nauseous.

Not one bit of kindness, not once.

I am so sorry WhiteC0sm05. It's an absolute shit show. Up, down, left and right.

I'd happily lead a demonstration. I really would

Number of issues, many of which have been raised.

1. Underfunded so thresholds are higher.
2. Staff have very high caseloads. So less time to prep for sessions, discuss cases, get support and supervision. Going back to back from one appointment to the next isn't great for anyone.
3. A race to the bottom. Instead of paying highly qualified and experienced staff, they get cheaper staff who are trained in only one approach. If this doesn't work, then it's out the door or back on the waiting list.
4. Fewer early intervention services.
5. More mental health difficulties generally.
6. No funding for training

I find it shocking that camhs/GPS refuse to refer privately on the basis of not knowing private practitioners outcomes when so many of them are actually in the service. Also if young people are discharged after the first of six sessions they don't actually know the outcome where their own practitioners are concerned.

We did not need a referral and if we had, he would have remained abroad. At any rate, our GP was sympathetic, just a victim of the system, his hands were as tied as ours and was fine with our going private and had they needed his support he was happy to give it. If your GP does not, you may need to also consult a private GP who will.

We have been discharged from CAMHS. Won't use them again. I wouldn't take my hamster to the service as it stands out here.

What would a Mumsnet campaign do? Statistically most of the posters on here probably voted Tory. We had an option to improve things in healthcare.

That said, the social workers and one other doctor were also on board with our going private. We had to pay in Canada but it's about the same price as it is here. He has a great rapport with his psychiatrist and psychologist there so we'll continue even if I had to borrow against this house.

The drug treatment was very necessary to stabilise him, even the GP and other doctor said this but could not prescribe due to restrictions. He also got an emergency appointment with the community paediatrician (she was well known to be useless, it took 3 years of the school going back to her before he was diagnoses with the HFA/Asperger's alone) so please don't discount it, White. He is a star at taking his medication and even tells you now when he can feel it wearing off (he takes his in the morning). Also to get his slow-release melatonin which the community paed refused to prescribe him 4 years ago because 'I don't believe in drugging children.'