Vincent is 14. He gets top marks in maths, plays for the school football team and helps his younger sister with her homework. But at home, a quiet tragedy unfolds. His parents, both professionals working long hours, have never told him he is good enough. ‘I get 90 per cent and they ask where the other 10 per cent went,’ he told a child psychologist. ‘I feel like I’m invisible unless I’m perfect.’ The result: anxiety, self-harm and a two-year wait for a CAMHS appointment.
Vincent’s story is not exceptional. It is a symptom of a system buckling under demand. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in England are struggling to cope with a surge in referrals, up 39 per cent since 2017 according to NHS Digital. Yet the number of clinicians has barely risen. For every 10 children referred, only four receive treatment within the target 18 weeks. The rest join a waiting list that, in some areas, stretches to two years.
The reasons are complex. Rising academic pressure, social media, the fallout of the pandemic. But psychologists point to a deeper malaise: a culture of relentless achievement that leaves no room for imperfection. ‘Parents today are terrified their children will fail,’ says Dr. Emma Jones, a child psychologist in Manchester. ‘They think pushing harder is love. But for a child, constant criticism — even if it’s meant as motivation — feels like rejection.’
Vincent’s parents, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, are devastated. ‘We wanted him to succeed. We didn’t realise we were breaking him,’ his mother said. ‘We thought he knew we loved him. Now we see that’s not enough.’
The impact on the NHS is severe. Each untreated case can escalate into crisis: school refusal, eating disorders, suicide attempts. CAMHS is a acute service, meant for the most severe cases, but is now seeing children with moderate anxiety because there is nowhere else to go. ‘We are firefighting,’ says a consultant psychiatrist in Leeds. ‘Early intervention could prevent so much suffering, but we don’t have the resources.’
The government has pledged an extra £2.3 billion for mental health by 2024, but experts say the money is not reaching frontline services. ‘The system is fragmented,’ says Sarah Hughes of the charity Mind. ‘Schools, GPs, social care — they all need to work together. But they are all underfunded and overstretched.’
For Vincent, help came through a pilot programme in his school that offered access to a mental health support team. Within two months, he learned to challenge his negative thoughts. His parents attended family therapy. ‘I told them I need to hear them say they’re proud of me — even when I make mistakes,’ Vincent said. ‘Now they say it, and it feels like I can breathe.’
But such support is a postcode lottery. In much of the country, children like Vincent wait years. And while they wait, the damage deepens. The real economy of mental health — lost education, lost productivity, broken families — is a cost we all bear.
As one headteacher in a deprived northern town put it: ‘We are raising a generation who feel they are never enough. That is a societal failure.’
