A Mental Health Concern
You have been directed to this page because the concerns you have appear to relate to your child’s mental health.
In this section you will find links to information about a range of mental health difficulties. Mental health, like all health difficulties, has a continuum of severity and not all will need support from a specialist CAMHS service.
The aim is to help you explore the concerns you have about your child more fully and consider what support they might need and who is best placed to provide this.
What is the Mental Health Pathway?
A CAMHS service providing specialist support where there are concerns regarding serious Mental Health.
Serious Mental Health is defined as: 'Mental, behavioural or emotional disorder resulting in serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activity.'
Questions to ask yourself before considering CAMHS:
- Have the difficulties been around for longer than 6 months or has there been a sudden unexplained change in behaviour?
- Are the mental health difficulties having a significant impact on multiple areas of day to day life? e.g. non attendance at school, social withdrawal, significant sleep difficulties, eating issues, marked behavioural difficulties?
- Are there complex risk factors present? e.g. Looked after? Parental Mental Health issues? History of abuse? Previous mental health difficulties?
If you answered Yes to 2 or more of these questions, a referral to CAMHS might be appropriate.
Emotional Distress / Mental Illness
Being a parent means it can be difficult to watch your child go through distress of any kind. Be it a breakdown in friendships, the pressures of exams or developmental changes. Significant changes of any kind in their lives can result in a period of increased worry or lower mood. It can raise your own anxiety and worry as parents. You may become concerned that something much more difficult is happening for them which might need more specialist support than you as parents feel you can offer?
Most children and young people’s experiences of emotional distress do not need to be seen by CAMHS. Often they are a normal response to changes and challenges in their lives and they may need a bit of time, and lots of support from you and those around them. With this support young people can recover well without the need for CAMHS. If you think this isn’t enough and that your child’s difficulties are starting to get in the way of their life, help is available for both of you. Try talking to your child’s teacher or school mental health champion, school nurse, GP, or their social worker (if they have one). They can help you to decide if your child might need some extra help and if they think CAMHS might be the best service to provide this and they’ll make a request for support (referral) to us on behalf of your family.
You’ll find lots of information, local supports and Apps to help over on our
resources page too.
