MPs call for more support for young people who self-harm

A cross-party group of MPs is calling on the government to do more to tackle the issue of young people self-harming.

A report's found some are being "bounced" between services and claims professionals aren't given enough training to know how to respond if a young person is showing signs they need help.

The All Party Parliamentary Group heard evidence from service providers and young people who had been through the system to find better ways of halting a worrying rise in self harm in young people.

The enquiry found: "Demand for mental health services outstripping capacity predates the Covid-19 pandemic and has led to the exclusion of young people from those services on the basis of their self-harming behaviour. The inquiry took evidence from young people who had been ‘bounced’ from one service to another, in crisis and struggling to get the help they needed."

Listen to Liz Twist tell Senior Correspondent Mick Coyle about the findings of the report in this week's Mental Health Monday podcast available here

The enquiry praised the work of community and charity organisations who provide services away from a medical environment, and raised the issue of lack of training for professionals who didn't know how to respond effectively when a young person is potentially at risk of self-harming.

APPG Chair Liz Twist MP told us: "We heard about the limited amount of training there is for people and clearly there is a wide variation, I think people want to do their best but want to feel confident about how they can help, and where they can refer."

She also highlighted the lived experience of some young people who were told their needs were not serious enough.

"What they were telling us was that if they actually self harm and end up in hospital, not always, but sometimes, people brush them off and tell them they're not ill enough to get the help they need. We've got to do something about that."

The report recommended a series of measures to tackle the issue:

• The Government should implement a new system of early intervention to support young people who self-harm. This could be based on a network of open-access mental health services based in local communities, which provide immediate support in a non-clinical settings.

• Dept for Educaton should provide schools and colleges with increased mental health resource sooner to roll out Mental Health Support Teams more widely so that they are able to undertake preventative interventions around self-harm more consistently.

• Government bodies should ensure that third sector and community-based organisations are able to continue helping young people who self-harm by providing a sure financial footing for the future.

You can read the Executive Summary of the report here.

And listen to the award-winning podcast Mental Health Monday by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts.