I’m 16 years of age and I suffer from mental health problems which affect me every day of my life. But are the agencies I have to work with doing enough to actually help me and others like me I feel not.

The Police; whenever the police have been involved with me I felt like I’ve been treated like a pariah and not as someone who suffers from mental health issues. On many occasions where I have had to be sectioned 136 under the mental health act which is when the police take you to a safe place I feel they’ve not understood my stresses and have just looked after me as they would a criminal. Sometimes they make me feel guilty for the actions I have taken saying things such as “we should be out nicking real criminals and not people like you”. I feel the police need more training in the field of dealing with people and their mental health in the UK. Others such as Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane may add that although they have their failures “We hear all the time about police having to ‘pick up the pieces’ where psychiatric services have failed mentally ill people”. Which brings me onto my next point why are psychiatric services slow in response?

CAMHS and The Crisis Team; on ever arriving in hospital with a crisis in hand I’ve felt the wait has been ridiculous on having to see the on call psychiatrist. Some may say it was self-inflicted so you should have to wait it out in silence but I feel that everyone who uses the NHS services should have an equal amount of liberties but unfortunately this is not the case. In some cases I have had to wait up to 4 hours to get the treatment I needed and I feel they put people with mental health issues last. When being assessed by the crisis team I felt that they were adamant on not admitting me to a “safe place” despite me begging them to put me in one. This brings me onto the next issue which is the admissions process into a psychiatric hospital. When I was 15 I was brought onto the children’s ward due to suicidal feelings and it took two and half weeks for them to find me a bed. Others have had the same struggles Miriam, 18 had to wait 6 months to find a bed and waited 6 hours in A&E for treatment. Norman Lamb, Minister of State for Care said that the provision of psychiatric beds had been cut by 2,000 in the past two years, and that spending on mental health had fallen steadily in that time. These facts are rather worrying why the government is spending less money on mental health that is the question that goes unanswered. Children and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) I feel take too much annual leave and leave the adolescent struggling without someone to replace them whilst on leave this is an issue I feel very strongly about as it affected me badly. Some adolescents just need someone to listen and when that service can’t be met they resort to others things which are detrimental to their own health and it’s all because CAMHS haven’t met the child’s need sufficiently.

These are the reasons I feel to believe that the NHS is failing people with mental health disorders. No the NHS hasn’t failed completely, most people get the services that are needed for them but for the procedures that have to be followed due to admissions are shockingly long and people have ended up getting the wrong treatment or even worse haven’t been treat at all. admissions are shockingly long and people have ended up getting the wrong treatment or even worse haven’t been treat at all. I have had many reports on my blog of young adolescents such as myself feeling they have been mistreated and some of the response I had were shocking that so many people feel this way about the system.