uh so this is my bedroom i just got it redecorated for my 16th birthday it kind of started around about the beginning of march and when i had a call from school and one of the favorite parts of it is probably my wardrobe so i've got all the memories things like me and my friends things i'm interested in i've got so all of a sudden lila just suddenly stopped eating um do you know she was clearly counting calories and then a majority of the photos in there sort of come from a polaroid camera it seemed
to spiral really quite quickly um and it was it was it was horrific it was frightening lila has struggled with her mental health for a decade but during the pandemic it's got worse and now she regularly harms herself self-harm served as a real sort of a release to me i would um see if i had a bad day at school or just a tough time if i was going through something i just felt very overwhelmed i definitely did did get addicted to self-harm i look back on it now i definitely do regret it from being
referred for help to receiving treatment took four months and all the while lyla was getting worse you can see things kind of progressively kind of spiraling um so yeah and you were almost that crisis point by the time you kind of got that initial initial part appointment in well it's lovely to see you hi how are you doing lyla's eating disorder self-harm and suicidal thoughts have put her in serious risk she's getting support from children and adolescent mental health services or cams for short it was just like trying to replace the thoughts but it wasn't
effective this is a busy part of the nhs and as children tried to cope with the impact of the pandemic it's getting busier so over the past couple of months she's had a lot of life stresses so can you give me a phone call back please there is one case more pressing than probably any of the others this cams team at pennine care nhs trust is rated as excellent by the care quality commission but like many others it's understaffed nationally just one percent of all nhs funding goes to cams so it was just to let
you know that we've come to an outcome of that and that it is that you've got the diagnosis of autism i was going to explain it a little bit to you charlotte's a mental health nurse and she's busy they're a member of staff down here and that means more patients have to wait to be seen it makes you feel that you can do your job properly you can't do the job how you set out at the beginning to do it it feels like a big barrier you've got children coming in who they want to kill
themselves you've got children coming in who are self-harming so that's stressful on its own but then to add into the mix staffing issues lack of resources and it feels like overwhelming it feels overwhelming thousands of children are waiting longer than they should because cams is under pressure in 2020 nearly 31 000 children were referred to cams 38 percent of those children had to wait more than the 18-week nhs target to get their first assessment and 34 of those who were accepted had to wait more than 18 weeks to start treatment 617 had to wait more
than a year for treatment when you're at crisis point it is there and everything kicks in but you shouldn't have to get to crisis point to be able to receive that service yeah it's such like a an unimaginable concept that in order to get better and recover you have to hit the bottom when you have to get worse the government says it wants to invest 79 million pounds into mental health services for children and young people but the royal college of psychiatrists say that figure should be closer to 500 million pounds so for the people
who are in crisis and who absolutely need us right now there is not a weight but for the people who have less of a crisis presentation their weight is long and it's absolutely heartbreaking to to know that even with the weight lila is one of the lucky ones she's now being seen but for too many families the path to treatment is a long one nick martin sky news you
