Hampshire Thames Valley Mental Health Network recently held a GP study event in Oxford, focusing on Children and Young People’s Mental Health.
It was a great opportunity for GPs to hear from experts about key areas and services, to ask questions and to network. The importance of this topic area was demonstrated by the attendance of over 90 GPs from across the region.
This blog reviews the day, reflects on each session, and provides additional follow-up resources. The full agenda for the event is available here.
The afternoon was chaired by Becky Furlong, Senior Quality Improvement Manager for Hampshire Thames Valley Clinical Network. She set the scene by highlighting how the mental health of children and young people is a key priority in the NHS Long Term Plan, including commitments to:
- improve access to specialist mental health services – from its current rate of 25% now, to 35%, and then to 100% by the end of the decade
- expand Eating Disorder Services and implement Waiting Times Standard (so that urgent cases are seen within seven days and routine cases within four weeks)
- develop 0-25 services
- provide crisis and home treatment everywhere in England
- develop a national Waits Standard
- ensure there are mental health teams in schools, with 25% coverage by 2024
- improve access to the diagnosis of autistic spectrum conditions
Session 1: Diagnosis of autism and neurodiversity, how to manage symptoms and support children and their families
Maria Bourbon, Clinical Team Manager for Oxfordshire CAMHS kicked things off with her presentation on autism in children and young people. She covered topics that included early indicators, predisposing factors and top tips for treatment.
The presentation for Session 1 is available here.
Session 2: mental health support teams in schools
Next up was Lajla Johansson, Senior Commissioning Manager for CAMHS at Oxfordshire CCG. She introduced the proposed new service model to transform CAMHS across Oxfordshire, and talked about their involvement in the new green paper trailblazer pilot, which aims to develop mental health support teams in schools and colleges for 5 to 17 year olds, to pilot four week waiting times to develop a national access target, and to develop mental health leads in schools.
The presentation for Session 2 is available here.
Session 3: suicide risk assessments with focus on adolescents
Dr Isabel Paz, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Oxford Psychological Medicine Centre and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Oxford spoke engagingly about the assessment of suicide risk in adolescents.
She shared some stark statistics around suicide in young people and stressed the complexity of understanding motivation, noting that sometimes there is nothing explicit. She concluded that suicide is a multifactorial problem with a multifactorial solution, and obtaining a good history and clinical nose remains the most accurate risk assessment tool.
The presentation for Session 3 is available here.
Session 4: eating disorders – spotting the signs
We reconvened after a short interval to hear from Vickie Kearney, Team Manager of Oxfordshire child and adolescent eating disorder service. She presented on spotting the signs of eating disorders, when to be concerned, and what is involved in specialist support. This included highlighting the use of the SCOFF questionnaire and the Junior Marsipan guidelines. Vickie also highlighted the information which GPs can provide which helps support and hasten the referral.
The presentation of Session 4 is available here.
Session 5: mental health and issues in schools
To round off the event, we heard from Mina Fazel, Associate Professor in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. Mina gave an engaging and informative talk on mental health in schools and the rising number of requests for mental health service intervention. To try and understand the reasons for this, the Oxfordshire Online Pupil Health and Wellbeing Survey aims to gain insights into the pupil voice and helps to set prioirities for improving the health and wellbeing of schoolchildren.
Additional resources
For additional resources related to this study session, click here.
For presentations and films from previous GP study sessions, click here.
There are also a number of films by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust that have been developed with young people talking about their mental health and wellbeing, as shown below:
