Report finds 1 in 5 young people get mental health help by age 18

By Stephen Beech

One in five young people in the UK now access specialist mental health care by age 18 – a dramatic four-fold increase in under two decades.

Figures from Wales – which researchers say serve as an accurate indicator for the whole of the UK – indicate a "consistent" year-on-year rise in service use, with a sharp acceleration since 2010.

Experts say that existing services may no longer meet the "soaring" needs of today’s young people, with many treatment decisions based on decades-old evidence.

Rates of mental ill health among young people have been rising worldwide.

But there has been a lack of evidence on the proportion of young people using specialist NHS child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

University of Edinburgh researchers tracked children born in Wales from 1991 to 2005 to measure how many had accessed specialist care before their 18th birthday.

They found that, of all individuals born in 1991, 5.8% had attended CAMHS before they turned 18 in 2009.

In comparison, of all children born in 2005, 20.2% had attended CAMHS by the time the turned 18 in 2023 – a rise from one in 17 young people to one in five.

Given the similar clinical framework for CAMHS and the shared, long-term drivers of demand across the four nations, researchers say that trends from Wales likely apply to all of the UK.

The study analyzed anonymized administrative health records from the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank, which covers most of the Welsh population.

The findings show that teenagers were far more likely than younger children to be in touch with CAMHS.

In the early 2000s there were similar numbers of boys and girls attending services, but by 2022 there were nearly twice as many girls as boys.

Mental health experts say the findings, published in The British Journal of Psychiatry, highlight the "pressing" need for more research into the factors driving the rising demand, and an assessment of the effectiveness of interventions offered in CAMHS.

Study leader Ian Kelleher, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh, said: “This study provides the clearest picture yet of the soaring demand for CAMHS.

"There has been a seismic shift in the numbers coming to CAMHS, but there has been far too little research to understand why this is the case."

Kelleher added: "Contrary to a lot of public discourse, this is not a post-pandemic issue – this trend has been building consistently for over a decade.

“Unlike oncology or cardiology services, there is far too little research and evaluation taking place in CAMHS.

"Clinicians want to provide the best possible care but we need stronger modern evidence on which to base our treatment decisions.

"Robust clinical research programmes are not a luxury, they are the only way to ensure our systems and treatments are effective for today’s young people.”