How SNP is complicit in betrayal of children with mental health problems
Children need less screen time, less sugar, more exercise and sleep, and properly resourced schools so teachers have the time to treat them as individuals
This week, the lights will go out in classrooms across Scotland as children head home to start the countdown to Christmas. Presents piled under the tree, advent calendars, out-of-tune carols – the Christmas rituals remain comfortingly the same.
Yet something about childhood has fundamentally changed. Nearly 300,000 children in Scotland – more than two in five – are classed as having additional support needs, such as dyslexia and ADHD.
Ten years ago, the proportion was one in five. Many of those who have received a diagnosis for ADHD or autism as adults will argue that these figures reflect decades of ignorance and under-diagnosis, in the same way that children with dyslexia were previously dismissed as not being very smart, by teachers who did not understand their condition.
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Removed from waiting list
Today, though, awareness of dyslexia is embedded in classroom teaching, with everything from special dyslexia-friendly fonts to entire novels aimed at dyslexic readers. When it comes to ADHD or autism, however, too many children are simply referred for a diagnosis that never comes.
The SNP government is complicit in this betrayal after simply removing children with suspected neurodivergent conditions from the Child and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS) waiting list. For a child who is in their critical years of development, this is as bad as no treatment at all.
Indeed, the latest CAMHS figures showed a third of those referred to the service were later rejected. Often the reason is simply that they have aged out of the service by the time they were able to be assessed.
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The good news is that this is a problem everyone wants to fix. This week the charity Children First called for a renewed focus on prevention, while the Royal College of Psychiatrists has urged the Scottish Government to examine ways that neurodivergent children can be supported without being forced to wait for a diagnosis.
This does raise the question, what is a diagnosis actually for? In some cases, a diagnosis is required to prescribe medication, which can be transformative for some patients with ADHD. And it’s essential there is a way that children with severe autism who will always need specialist support to receive it as soon as possible.
School mobile phone ban
But for other families, a diagnosis is primarily a tool for asking for help and understanding at a critical time in a child’s life. Rather than placing extra hoops for such families to jump through, we should try to change the system so that as few children as possible need to go down a clinical route to get that help.
We need properly resourced schools so teachers have the time to treat children as individuals. Less screen time, less sugar and more exercise and sleep. And an end to mobile phones in schools — as Scottish Labour has already pledged to introduce.
Portobello High School did just this after surveying 1,500 students and found strong links between screen time, poor sleep and anxiety. Today, students are calmer and more engaged, and almost all parents back the ban.
If the frenzied crowds on Christmas Eve are anything to go by, parents just want their kids to be happy. And the best present they could get from the Scottish Government is proper support.
Jackie Baillie is MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and her party’s spokesperson for health
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