Best Practice

CAMHS under pressure

A recent survey of school leaders shows that many are concerned about their pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, but that delays to CAMHS are preventing them getting quick and effective help. Amy Cook reports.

I heard rather a lot about mental health recently. In June I went along to the Sunday Times Festival of Education where I heard the author Andrew Solomon talk about his interviews with an American woman whose schizophrenia was so devastating that she could hear her neck muscles sizzling and feel them burning. She was completely convinced that she was possessed by a demon.

Schizophrenia afflicts only a tiny minority, and hers was an extreme case. But it took her years to find help and to understand that there was a name for what she was experiencing. And the emotional difficulties she experienced at school went unnoticed.

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