Opinions of CAMHS??

There are other methods?

Yes there's a lot of different types of therapy. Counselling is just one approach. You might find CBT useful, for example. However don't take CBT if the provider is something called a psychological wellbeing practitioner. They are pretty much untrained and virtually useless.

What's that?

No that's the point. He's useless.

Useless, a girl i know was marked as 'no danger' yet a few weeks later she committed suicide.

Cognitive behavioural therapy. Focuses on coping strategies and changing the way you think.

Have you tried swapping people? My person is a guy too and some people suggested to me that a woman might be better suited to me because they’re sometimes a bit more understanding and maybe that’s what you need. I’m sorry to hear that he’s useless

Wow. I thought I had a bad experience with CAMHS but looks like their standards are lower than I thought! I was suffering with anorexia, they took 3 months to actually see me (all the while I was still starving and my condition was worsening). Luckily, my first therapist was great and did CBT with me; I was weighed weekly, was made to write a food diary. BUT, after 3 months she disappeared and CAMHS didn't tell me why. The CAMHS I went to was so severely understaffed that I was put with a therapist who offered a service (psychotherapy) that was completely unsuited to me personally and my condition. I stopped turning up and they didn't seem to care.

CAMHS is severely underfunded; there aren't enough staff, resources or clinics to help the growing number of people suffering with mental health. It is sad.

I was waiting for almost 8 months for help from camhs for low mood, anxiety, self harm and suicidal thoughts and was eventually seen in June. I’ve just finished year 12 at school and this has really impacted my whole life and my school work. I’m starting to get to the point where I feel nothing will get better because I’ve started my therapy yet I’m still feeling the same and my memory is getting really bad now.
What I really want to know is how long other people were waiting for help (from referral to the start of your treatment)? What you were treated for when you did get help? What sort of experience did you have with camhs?
Thank you ❤️

Also she made me feel like I was wasting time and money by going there. I had some serious problems like friendship which was seriously affecting me at school. She made them sound pathetic and offering simple soloutions like ‘meet up with X on Saturday’ like I would if I could!! I felt really stupid going there

It is but I couldn’t report them because I didn’t have any access to phones, internet etc (my parents wanted to cut me off from literally everyone bc they didn’t want me having friends).

I even remember them asking me why I self harmed and I said it was my parent’s fault (they are both abusive to me) and that I was lonely and had no friends and no one to talk to and I warned her they’d hit me but she still ****ing told my parents.

Funny how she did nothing about the fact that my parents were abusive but felt so concerned about my safety that she reported scars from over a year before the appointment lol.

I got referred to CAMHS and they were so slow to take action that I literally turned 18 before I saw them / heard a peep from them. So I had to have a new referral made for adult mental health services.

So it’s safe to say that my opinion of CAMHS is not particularly well-informed. Nevertheless, based on my little experience with them, and other people’s experiences, my opinion of them is very low indeed.

Nah I had a woman a few years back. Even worse.

That’s terrible!! If you say something like that they’ve got a legal duty to contact social services, as you are at risk. I’m so sorry that you were treated like that. Are you still living with your parents?

I don’t know anything about CAMHS specifically but a good friend of mine works as part of the pastoral care team for Bristol University - the Uni with the highest rate of mental health and suicide, and I can tell you for a fact that these pastoral organisations all try their absolute best to help clients get through everything they are dealing with - but the supply to demand ratio is simply too high. He says at any one point in the year, with this statistic increasing over the winter and colder months, at least 10% of the Universities population are seeking therapy or some other treatment from his team.

Without the use of medicine, the current suicide count from this year alone would be at least treble of what it currently is, so please don’t write off on TSR saying CAMHS is a terrible organisation that doesn’t care for it’s clientele - because if that was the case then it simply wouldn’t exist.

I expect it is a very similar thing as with UoB, there is simply too high a demand. How would you feel if because they stopped seeing other people altogether just for you, and as a result something happened to that group of people just because you felt your OWN care wasn’t sufficient enough? They need to balance it out fairly across everyone, and for an organisation where most of the workers are probably volunteers, like my friend AND his pastoral team, it can be incredibly difficult for them. They cannot be responsible for you, they can only help guide you in the right direction.

I’m so sorry that you had to wait so long for help. I find the waiting makes everything worse as you’ve not only got these issues spinning round your head, you know that there are people who can help you fix it but you just can’t have that help yet, meanwhile your life is spinning out of control and you have no idea what you’re meant to be doing for the best. Did you have to wait as long for adult services?

CAHMS is and always has been a disaster. I dealt with them twice, 20 years apart, and it was abysmal. They broke confidentiality over one of my daughters ‘in error’ they said which caused no end of trouble in the family. The problem, in my opinion is that the wrong people are being trained for the job. Everything is text-book based. Some of them have no idea how to deal with distressed teens and nothing much changed since.

Quite frequently yes. In my home town, there are currently 0 NHS counsellors. There are 2 starting in September. I have been on the waiting list for 6 months. I was supposed to get counselling within 6 weeks. I know someone who has been on the waiting list for 14 months. The only suggestion is paying privately. That can cost £60 an hour for an experienced, appropriately trained and qualified counsellor.

The whole system is a complete joke. I'm currently in the process of formally complaining. It's only through pure luck and the fact that I have an understanding boss and a wonderful mother and boyfriend and an excellent GP that I'm still alive. If I didn't have the support network I do, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have been hospitalised at the very least. The people who preside over this shambolic service need to be done for corporate manslaughter. Their job is to provide treatment. People are dying on the waiting list.

Yeah. I still live with my parents but they mostly just ignore me now. It’s not really so bad I guess.