More Access to Mental Health for the Young
After having written about this on several occasions and after the professional bodies representing psychological services have lobbied over and over again to the government, I am pleased to hear that there are new proposals to increase access for mental health support through schools and colleges.
This is to include a four week wait time for specialist services and new mental health support teams to be created. This of course is good news, the not so good part of it is that this will not be in place until 2022 and that it will only be available in one in four schools.
It is essential, as I and others, have said before that we must tackle mental health issues at an early age. This would of course, have two key benefits. The first is the hopes that mental distress can be dealt with in a more timely way which would lead to less issues in adulthood being started in childhood. The second, and I believe just as important, is that by normalising mental health treatment in the young, it will be far less stigmatised as they get older and should they need it in their adulthood, they will be far more amenable to receiving it.
This is only one small step in making mental health equivalent to physical health, whilst we should be encouraged by this we must not be complacent. Vigalence in our insistence must be our bye word.
