Mental health services utterly failed my child | Letters

Parents write of the agonising attempts to access support for their children, in response to an article about a 17-year-old who killed herself while waiting for therapyThe story about 17-year-old Jen Bridges-Chalkley, who killed herself after enduring a long wait for mental health support, was very hard to read, and almost identical to my son’s experience (The life and death of Jen Bridges-Chalkley: why did a 17-year-old die waiting for NHS therapy?, 6 February). He is now nearly 30, and – by the skin of his teeth – alive. He has tried to kill himself five times. He has rarely wanted to die, but many times he has wanted to stop living.One of those times when he was distraught and suicidal, I rang the child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) out-of-hours “emergency line” repeatedly and left desperate messages. I didn’t even receive a call back that week. The times someone did respond, it was to tell us to call the police to pick up my desperate, terrified child to take him to a hospital where no one cared and he was regarded as a bedblocker. We stopped doing that. Continue reading...