Is social prescribing the prescription for youth mental health?

The latest NHS figures show that in December 2023 nearly 750,000 children and young people were in contact with NHS mental health services. Reports from the previous year suggested young people waited on average between two weeks and 3 months to be seen by mental health professionals.

 The NHS is not keeping up with the need for mental health support. Could social prescribing be the answer?

Social prescribing involves connecting young people with the community, through activities like cinema clubs and nature walks. NHS England launched a social prescribing service in 2018 to link patients with non-medical support in the community. And it has been suggested that young people on waiting lists for child and adolescent mental health services or CAMHS might benefit from social prescribing.

But what does the evidence show? Young people are often in crisis by the time they are referred for mental health support – is there evidence to suggest that social prescribing improves young people’s mental health?

We interviewed Dr. Daniel Hayes, Senior Research Fellow at University College London, to find out.

You can read the article we discussed here:

Hayes and colleagues (2023), The impact of social prescribing on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing: https://socialprescribingacademy.org.uk/media/lrif2emh/evidence-review-the-impact-of-social-prescribing-on-children-and-young-peoples-health-and-wellbeing.pdf

Researcher recommendations

Find out more about the research on The Social Biobehavioural Research Group website: https://sbbresearch.org

Help and support

If you are affected by any of the issues discussed in the episode, you can access free support via the following links:

The Mix online chat and phone helplines: https://www.themix.org.uk/get-support

Samaritans contact information: https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/

Mind Charity contacts: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/for-children-and-young-people/useful-contacts/

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