Camhs support withdrawn once a child's autism diagnosis is disclosed, committee told
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Providing adequate mental health supports and treatment to children is vital in order to “prevent a car crash waiting to happen”, the Oireachtas Health Committee has been told.
Meeting with advocacy group Families for Reform of Camhs (the HSE’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) on Wednesday, the committee heard that it is vital that children with undiagnosed mental disorders see an intervention before they go through puberty.
However, the committee heard that access to Camhs at all can be very difficult to attain, particularly for children with autism. Some 85% of the group’s 827 members who have a child with autism say that diagnosis has negatively impacted the service and support their child has received.
Meanwhile, some of those members reported Camhs support being withdrawn once an autism diagnosis was disclosed, while others raised concerns that turning away autistic children is being used as a means of reducing waiting lists.
Currently there are 16,000 children awaiting a mental health assessment in Ireland.
Group advocate Hannah Ni Ghiolla Mhairtin said it is "mind-boggling" that autistic children with suicidal ideation were being turned away from Camhs. At present the second highest cause of death among people with autism in Ireland is suicide.
“This we can’t really get our head around,” she said. “They’re being told they don’t have a moderate to severe mental health issue. And parents are heartbroken, they’re trying to get help.”
She pointed out that autistic children with anxiety or depression can fall between the cracks in the Irish health service, as those conditions are seen as separate to autism in Ireland, and such children are referred back to their local children’s disability network team (CDNT), which are seen to have the expertise to deal with autistic diagnoses.
However, Ms Ni Ghiolla Mhairtin explained that CDNTs are not qualified to handle the depression or anxiety diagnoses, meaning that autistic children can “fall between two stools”. “The policy situation does not reflect reality,” she said.
Fellow member of the group, which has more than 800 families since being set up last summer, Emer Deasy stressed that the longer a child with an undiagnosed condition such as ADHD goes without support, the more likely it is they will withdraw from their peer group and get “more and more depressed”.
“Earlier interventions aren’t happening for ADHD and it’s important to do it pre-puberty ,” she said.
She added that doing so would prevent such children “from becoming a burden on the State” in their adult lives.
The group said mental health services in Ireland are almost completely unregulated, something which is “massively concerning” according to group member and child psychologist Grainne Morrison.
“In any form of medicine you need an overarching body,” she said. “Yet I see they’re going to regulate electric scooters.”
The witnesses said that while the HSE and Minister for Mental Health Mary Butler had been “very receptive” to their concerns, they had outlined little in the way of specifics as to what reforms are on the table. Despite this, Ms Ni Ghiolla Mhairtin stated that “absolutely” the deficiencies in Camhs could be fixed if the political will to do so was present.