Children as young as six going to A&E in mental health crisis

England’s Emergency Rooms Are Becoming the Last Resort for Children in Mental Health Distress

Ninoda.com – Hospital corridors designed for broken bones and cardiac emergencies are increasingly filling with six-year-olds in tears, teenagers who have cut themselves, and young people spiralling into eating-disorder crises — often with no other option available. NHS paediatric specialists have sounded the alarm over what they describe as a growing national emergency: children and adolescents arriving at accident-and-emergency departments in England in acute psychological distress, sometimes after waiting more than half a day before receiving any meaningful care.

The Numbers Behind the Crisis

An analysis commissioned by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), drawing on data released through the Freedom of Information Act by NHS England, reveals a steep upward trajectory. In 2025, a total of 75,491 children and young people aged six to seventeen presented at A&E departments for a mental health concern. That figure represents a 36 per cent increase from the 55,525 recorded in 2019. The sharpest climbs were concentrated among the youngest cohort — children aged six to nine — whose attendances surged well beyond any demographic trend.

For context, overall A&E attendances across England rose by just over eight per cent over the same six-year window. The mental-health-specific spike therefore dwarfs general growth in emergency department use, signalling a distinct and accelerating pressure point in the health system.

What Happens Once They Arrive

Many of these children are brought in by exhausted parents, overwhelmed carers, or police officers responding to a household emergency. Some arrive already displaying aggressive behaviour or what clinicians term “challenging behaviour,” often the outward expression of a young person in severe emotional crisis who has had no prior access to therapeutic support.

Once inside, the experience is far from therapeutic. More than 6,200 children — roughly eight per cent of the total — waited longer than twelve hours before being seen. Emergency departments, with their fluorescent lighting, triage queues, and clinical urgency, were never architected to serve as prolonged holding spaces for a child in psychological turmoil.

Voices from the Frontline and Beyond

Dr Sam Jones, the RCPCH’s officer for mental health, framed the data in human terms:

“Behind every one of these figures is a child or young person in distress and a family who didn’t know where else to turn. Emergency departments are a vital safety net, but they were never designed to be a place where children in mental health crisis wait for days at a time. This is a national crisis that will only get worse without urgent intervention.”

She stressed that the root cause is a deficit of community-based mental health care, particularly crisis-level support, across many regions of England. Alongside greater funding for children’s mental health services, she called for improved training among staff in health, social care, and education settings so they can recognise and respond to struggling young people before a situation escalates to the point of an emergency presentation.

Dr Mark Buchanan of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine offered a blunt assessment of why children end up in these departments at all:

“They deserve care within systems and settings that are designed to meet their needs.”

His point is that A&E becomes the destination by default — not by choice, but because no alternative pathway exists at the moment a child’s crisis peaks.

Charity Perspectives on Systemic Failure

Gemma Byrne of the mental health charity Mind highlighted the particular vulnerability of children in hospital environments:

“A&E can be a frightening environment for anyone in mental health crisis, let alone a child. Making them spend more than 12 hours there is simply unacceptable.”

Byrne argued that the current eligibility threshold — whereby many services only engage once a young person is deemed “unwell enough” to qualify — leaves a vast middle ground of struggling children without support. She pointed to the expansion of “young future hubs,” multi-purpose community spaces bundling mental health, employment, sports, and volunteering services, as a critical structural intervention.

Claire Evans of Anna Freud, a charity focused on children, young people, and families, called the statistics “deeply concerning” and urged that whatever strategy the government publishes must centre children’s needs:

“The new mental health strategy must place children at its heart, creating the conditions for lifelong positive mental health and accelerating investment in accessible, community-based support.”

Government Response and What Comes Next

The Department of Health and Social Care has signalled that a new national mental health strategy is expected to be published later this summer. A departmental spokesman pointed to measures already underway, including investment in dedicated mental health teams embedded within schools and the rollout of more than 150 new mental health hubs located in everyday community venues such as banks and public libraries.

“No child should have to reach crisis point before getting the support they need,”

the spokesman added.

Whether these measures will arrive quickly enough to reverse the trajectory documented in the RCPCH analysis remains the central question. The data make clear that the gap between a child’s need and the system’s capacity to meet it has widened dramatically since 2019, and that emergency departments are absorbing a burden they were never built to carry. For families navigating a child’s mental health crisis in England today, the absence of a timely, community-based alternative is not a theoretical concern — it is the lived reality behind every one of those 75,491 attendances.