The dominant narrative across the media operating in Scotland, the opposition parties and a few parents groomed by them, is, as in the Daily Record headline above, on 20 April 2026.
Often ignored are these facts:
From Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) waiting times Quarter ending March 2026 published today, the above graph showing the 90% target beaten for 6 quarters (3 months) in a row, and:
91.2% of people started treatment within 18 weeks of referral, which is an increase from 90.0% for the previous quarter. 3,858 people started treatment in CAMHS. This is an increase of 2.4% (91) from the 3,767 starting treatment in the previous quarter and an increase of 1.8% (68) from the 3,790 patients who started treatment in the quarter ending March 2025. 50% of those starting treatment started within 6 weeks of referral.
Today, from the UK’s other top, high impact, medical journal, the BMJ, we read from Secular trends in primary care utilisation for mental health problems: a Norwegian register-based population-wide study:
Evidence from several countries suggests increasing mental health problems among children and adolescents, raising concerns about deteriorating population mental health. Whether rising consultation rates reflect worsening morbidity or changes in help-seeking remains unclear.
The prevalence of mental health problems increased substantially from 2010 to 2024, driven primarily by symptom-coded consultations. These patterns suggest lowered help-seeking thresholds and/or changes in coding, although changes in underlying distress cannot be excluded. https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2026/06/25/jech-2026-226059?utm_medium=email&utm_source=allhealthy
Put plainly, they find strong evidence that what has been portrayed as a real, measurable increase in depression and anxiety among children and adolescents is, at the very least, likely to be due to a greater readiness to come forward and ask to be referred and/or changes in the way medics are assessing potential patients rather than an actual increase on the scale suggested by the Daily Record.
The research was undertaken in Norway, a context very similar to, at least, the other democracies of Northern and Western Europe and, perhaps very close to Scotland.
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2 thoughts on “Research reveals increasing mental health referrals among children may be more due to a greater readiness to come forward and to coding changes than to an actual increase in depression and anxiety and casts Daily Record reporting as ill-informed and exploitative”