Age discrimination across the lifespan

Many of Anderson's observations ¹ on unjustified age discrimination at the later stages of the lifespan apply also to children and adolescents with mental health problems. They receive a disproportionately low level of funding, are excluded from much research, are subject to often inappropriate extrapolation of treatment guidelines for adults, and until recently have been excluded from formal mental health strategic thinking (both the National Service Framework ² and New Horizons ³ specifically excluded child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) from their remits).

Anderson states that the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ position statement on age discrimination in mental health ⁴ incorporated contributions from all of its constituent faculties and sections. It is unclear to me where the contribution from the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Faculty is to be found. In this regard, the government's new mental health strategy ⁵ is to be welcomed as it adopts an all-age approach to mental health by explicitly including CAMHS within it. Strategies aimed at addressing age discrimination need to consider the whole of the lifespan if they are not unwittingly to recreate it.