Imagine you are a teenager who has started feeling severely anxious and worried all the time. This has begun to impact your daily life, making you withdraw from your friends, struggle to go to school, and unable to relate to the well-meaning support of parents. After a GP appointment, you are referred to your local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and told that they will be able to help you feel better. Your first appointment letter arrives, and you realise that you will have to wait a whole year until you can access this support.
Unfortunately, this scenario is far too common – recent statistics show that almost 30% of young people wait an average of 359 days to start receiving support from CAMHS (Children’s Commissioner, 2024). As mentioned in the current paper by Han et al. (2026), this far exceeds the government’s target of a 4-week waiting time for CAMHS.
However, currently little is known about how young people (and their parents or caregivers) experience waiting for CAMHS support. This is vital to inform improvements in services and is therefore the focus of this paper by Han et al (2026). The authors aimed to examine the experiences and coping strategies of young people (aged 11-18) on the CAMHS waitlist, triangulated with caregiver perspectives.
Waiting times for initial assessments in CAMHS often exceed the UK government’s target of four weeks by a considerable amount. How do young people feel while waiting for this support?
Methods
This study forms part of a larger project, evaluating social prescribing in CAMHS. Participants were recruited from the control group of the larger study – those who did not receive the intervention, which involved being connected with forms of community-based support with the help of a link worker or social prescriber whilst on the CAMHS waiting list.
Semi-structured interviews explored experiences of being on a CAMHS waiting list and types of coping strategies used whilst waiting, with the wording of the topic guide slightly altered depending on age (e.g., changing phrases such as “improve your mental health” to “make yourself happy or well”). Data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Results
The study team interviewed 20 youth and 15 caregivers, 10 of whom formed youth-caregiver pairs.
Experiences of Waiting (4 themes)
| Theme | What participants reported |
|---|---|
| Decline in health | Mental and physical health deteriorated; some reported worsening suicidal thoughts and behaviours |
| Strain on relationships | Family dynamics suffered; impacts on siblings and friendships (noted particularly by caregivers) |
| Unclear processes | Poor communication about waiting times and next steps |
| Need-support mismatch | Young people felt their choices and treatment preferences were ignored |
Coping Strategies While Waiting (4 themes)
Young people used:
- Self-help and parenting resources
- Hobbies (drawing, sport, music) – helpful but insufficient for specific needs like trauma
- Social support networks
- Alternative services
Caregivers reported:
- Feelings of stress, anxiety, and guilt
- Having to “fight” or “chase” to access support for their child
- Concern that this creates inequalities (those with more time/resources/system knowledge fare better)
Overall Experience
Participants reported an overarching negative view of CAMHS waiting lists. Concerningly, several participants reported that waiting to receive support made certain symptoms worse, in some cases relating to suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
Young people spoke of feeling alone, dismissed, or ignored by services. This was particularly exacerbated by the fact they often only sought help once their mental health had already deteriorated, meaning they felt they “needed help there and then”. Young people also reported feeling as though their choices and preferences were not taken into account, particularly regarding choice of treatment. This finding is important, as previous research indicates that mental health support is more effective if it is viewed as acceptable to the service user (Swift et al., 2018).
Interestingly, only parents explicitly spoke of the strain on family dynamics and wider relationships, which provides insight into the wide-reaching impacts of having to wait for mental health support, for example through impacts on siblings or friendships.
Some young people spoke of helpful coping strategies they used while waiting for a CAMHS appointment, such as drawing, sport or music, but these were often not sufficient to address mental health concerns.
Conclusions
Han et al. (2026) conclude the paper with four key recommendations for policy and practice based on their findings:
- Shorten CAMHS waiting times
- Improve information sharing and communication
- Provide interim support
- Tailor services to patients’ needs and preferences.
Given the huge demand for CAMHS support and lack of currently available funding to increase the capacity of these services, it is vital to explore alternative forms of support that can be offered to young people who require help. This might involve offering short, single-session interventions, as previously blogged about by Natalia Kika, which have been shown to be effective across a range of mental health problems and can be used alongside longer forms of support. Apps providing support tailored to improve physical activity, sleep hygiene, or the use of mindfulness techniques have the potential to reduce psychological distress for some young people and can also be offered in combination with more traditional support, as recently blogged by James Martin and Paul Hutton.
The authors recommend improving information sharing and communication to ensure young people and caregivers know the length of CAMHS waiting lists and next steps to reduce uncertainty and anxiety.
Strengths and limitations
In general, this is a well-reported and methodologically sound research study. A particular strength is the high level of lived experience involvement in both the design of the study and interpreting the findings. This involvement helps to ensure that the study is set up in a way that is acceptable to young people using mental health services, and that potentially difficult topics can be spoken about in a sensitive and thoughtful manner. It also means that findings are more likely to be relevant to the needs of this population and reported in a non-stigmatising way.
The purposive sampling approach has also resulted in a higher diversity of participants in terms of age, geographical location and diagnosis. This means that a wide range of views are likely to be represented, including from people who live in more urban or rural locations, or from areas with different service pathways or types of alternative support available. Combining the perspectives of both young people and caregivers is a further strength of this study, as this offers rich insights into both the young person’s lived experience, and also to the wider impacts on the young person’s life and family dynamics.
However, there are a few limitations of this work that are important to mention:
- Firstly, there is a lack of diversity of participants. The majority were White British and it is not clear whether the authors employed specific strategies to engage young people and caregivers from minoritised ethnic backgrounds in this research.
- Additionally, I would have found it beneficial if the participant identifiers presented after quotes included some details of the young person or caregiver to add some context to the quote itself and aid its interpretation. Whilst I can appreciate that this decision may have been taken to ensure anonymity of participants, including some information about the participants’ age, diagnosis or location would add relevant context to the participants’ words.
A strength of this study is the involvement of young people with lived experience throughout the research, ensuring that the study itself was acceptable to potential participants.
Implications for practice
These findings mirror those of my own PhD research, where I conducted a qualitative study to find out the impact of ‘falling through the gap’ between CAMHS and adult mental health services (AMHS). This gap in continuity of care exists because of the age-related and symptom severity thresholds for these different services. I interviewed young people and parents to find out their experiences of trying to access mental health support during this time, and the impact that falling through the gap had on their mental health (Appleton et al., 2021). The majority of my participants reported spending a long time on waiting lists to access support, and similar to the findings in this study, young people and their parents reported that their mental health had often worsened during this time without support. In some cases, this led to them dropping out of school or further education. Some young people I spoke to also reported ‘giving up’ on accessing further mental health support due to a poor experience at CAMHS. The parents in my study also spoke of similar frustrations reported by caregivers in the present research study, and the same difficulties navigating a complex system.
I conducted my interviews in 2019, and it is disappointing that similar barriers and negative impacts are still being experienced, even after a period of increased funding for young people’s mental health services (Gov.uk 2024) and the roll out of new services initiatives such as Mental Health Support Teams in schools (Gov.uk 2025).
The disparity in funding for CAMHS has been widely documented, with CAMHS previously referred to as “Cinderella of the Cinderella service” due to the lack of funding for mental health services compared to physical health (Frith, 2016). CAMHS receives only 1% of NHS funding (Children’s Commissioner, 2024). One of the conclusions made by the authors of this paper was that CAMHS waiting lists should be shortened, but it is difficult to see how this can happen without sustained investment in the sector. The current Labour government has pledged for Young Futures Hubs to be rolled out across the country, with a view to increasing access to mental health support for young people in their local communities (Gov.uk 2025b). Time will tell if this has an impact.
Strikingly, the 2025 Future Minds report states that “For every £1 invested in CAMHS, the return on investment is an estimated £2.20–£3.50 in benefits to individuals and an additional £1–£1.80 in savings to the Government” (Jones & Abdinair, 2025). Whilst there is a strong economic case for investing in children and young people’s mental health, we should not ignore the huge personal benefits to the young people and their families of being able to access timely and effective mental health support.
Investing in young people’s mental health services results in financial benefits for individuals and the government, which vastly outweigh the initial cost.
Statement of interests
Becky Appleton has conducted and published previous research in this area, but has no other conflicting interests to report.
Edited by
Dr Nina Higson-Sweeney
Links
Primary paper
Emeline Han, Alexandra Burton, Alexandra Bradbury, Daniel Hayes, Joely Wright, Lou Sticpewich, Joanna Page, & Daisy Fancourt (2026). Experiences of youth and caregivers waiting for mental health services in the UK: a qualitative study to inform policy and practice. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-025-02952-x
Other references
Appleton, R., Elahi, F., Tuomainen, H., Canaway, A., & Singh, S. P. (2021). “I’m just a long history of people rejecting referrals” experiences of young people who fell through the gap between child and adult mental health services. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 30(3), 401-413. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01526-3
Children’s Commissioner (2024). Children’s mental health services 2022-23. Available at: https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/resource/childrens-mental-health-services-2022-23/
Frith, E., (2016). Progress and challenges in the transformation of children and young people’s mental health care. Education Policy Institute, London. Available at https://centreforum.org/live/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/State-of-the-Nation-report-web.pdf
Gov.uk (2024). Press release: Extra funding for early support hubs. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/extra-funding-for-early-support-hubs
Gov.uk (2025) Press release: Almost million more pupils get access to mental health support. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/almost-million-more-pupils-get-access-to-mental-health-support
Gov.uk (2025b). Guidance: Young Futures Hubs. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/young-futures-hubs
Jones & Abdinasir (2025). Future Minds: Why investing in children’s mental health will unlock economic growth. Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition. Available at: https://cypmhc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Future-Minds-Report-2025-WEB.pdf
Kika, N. (2025). One more tool in the toolbox: an umbrella review of single-session interventions for mental health problems. The Mental Elf.
Martin, J., & Hutton, P. (2026). Only a swipe away: App-based support for reducing distress in university students. The Mental Elf.
Swift, J. K., Callahan, J. L., Cooper, M., & Parkin, S. R. (2018). The impact of accommodating client preference in psychotherapy: A meta‐analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(11), 1924-1937. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22680
