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The state of play in child and adolescent mental healthcare services (England): not in front of the children?
  1. Clare Gaskin1,
  2. Sally Hardy2
  1. 1Consultant Nurse, North East London Foundation NHS Trust
  2. 2Head of Mental Health and Learning Disabilities, School of Health Sciences, London South Bank University, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to : Sally Hardy, Head of Mental Health and Learning Disabilities, School of Health Sciences, London South Bank University, London, SE1 0AA, UK; sally.hardy{at}lsbu.ac.uk

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Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, what is it?

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) is specifically about working with children and young people (CYP) from 0 to 18 years old. It is over 10 years since it was reported that 1 in 10 children living in England have a diagnosed need for support and treatment for their mental health issues.1 Since then the statistics remain staggeringly high in terms of CYP's mental suffering living in a world where poverty, housing, abuse and stigma still haunts their upbringing.

CAMHS did not exist before the 1940s, except for a small number of psychoanalytically trained clinicians who were interested in understanding and treating children to enable them to become healthy adults (eg, Donald Winnicotti). Children during the pre-war era were treated in ‘Child Guidance Clinics’, predominantly run by local education authorities. Following the launch of the National Health …

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