Urgent action needed to repair mental health care system 'in crisis'

I went to the funeral of a friend who took her own life last week. She was a beautiful, horse-loving, vivacious mother of two wonderful daughters.

One of them, just 15, stood up in the church to speak. She spoke of the mum she loved, the mum she would desperately miss. And then she said this:

It was heartbreaking, but yet also shed a light on how mental illness continues to claim lives and destroy families in our country.

In the UK, we have some of the best emergency medicine in the world when it comes to physical health. But when it comes to emergency mental health, we can make no such boast.

In fact the system is in crisis.

Last year, nearly two million people in this country sought help for mental health problems. But many didn’t get the help they need. In June a report by the Care Quality Commission revealed thousands of people in urgent need of care received “inadequate support.”

My own family experience in the last couple of years has persuaded me how those with mental illness, particularly the young, get a raw deal. Early intervention can make a vast difference and yet there is no easy way to get help. It is haphazard.

You may get help or you may not. It may happen quickly or it may not. Teenagers may be in a children’s unit or thrown into an adult one.

Worse still, you may be sent hundreds of miles from home where your parents struggle to be with you. It is absurd and no wonder the outcomes are so poor.

It is why on ITV News this week we are running a series of reports on the state of mental health care in Britain.

An investigation by ITV News and the charity YoungMinds has revealed that in the last year alone £35 million has been cut from children and adolescent services, £85m in the past four years.

And worse, it is the early intervention services like those provided by local authorities in schools which have been hit hardest. So children with mental health problems are not being dealt with early enough and are ending up in wards - if they are lucky - with worsening problems.

We highlight the case of one teenager suffering from depression who tried to take her own life and who claims there were no appropriate services locally to help her deal with her problems.

Eventually she was referred to the children’s mental health service CAMHS but was placed on a waiting list for months.

This cannot be right. We also met a 22 year old girl with mental health problems forced to spend a night in a police cell because there were no beds available.

It is a dire state of affairs and one which needs urgent attention.

Who knows if the right help at the right time could have helped the mother whose funeral I went to last week .

Her 18-year-old daughter said at the funeral: "Although over the last few years life has been very tough for us, I believe she is finally at peace now - something it seems she would never have while still here."

How sad. How unremittingly sad.