Author: Tobi Thomas Health and inequalities correspondent

Children in Great Britain with serious mental health conditions are two-thirds more likely to have a limited ability to work in adulthood, according to research from a leading thinktank.The report by researchers at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) looked at data from about 6,000 people who took part in the 1970 British Cohort Study, which is following the lives of individuals born in a single week in 1970 across Great Britain.The analysis found that people who had severe mental and behavioural issues as a child were 85% more likely to have symptoms of depression at the age of 51, and 68% more likely to have a long-term condition that affects their ability to work.Children with a physical health problem were 38% more likely to have limited capacity for work in later life, according to the analysis.The government has pledged to “raise the healthiest generation of children in our history”. Labour has committed to introducing a targeted national dental hygiene programme, cutting paediatric waiting times with 2m more operations, and setting a 9pm watershed for junk food advertising.The IPPR recommended the government safeguard spending on children and preventive spending in the NHS and other public services, and expand the role of the children’s commissioner.In January, the Guardian reported that the number of children referred to emergency mental healthcare in England had risen by 10% in a year, with lengthy waiting lists for regular NHS care pushing more to crisis point.Previous research by the IPPR estimated that the hidden cost of rising workplace sickness in the UK had passed £100bn a year, with employees now losing the equivalent of 44 days of productivity because of working through sickness, up from 35 days in 2018.Amy Gandon, an associate fellow at the thinktank and a former senior government official on children’s health, said: “Successive governments have failed to face up to the long-term consequences of poor child health. If this government is serious about building a preventative state, it must act decisively to improve the prospects of our children and young people.“What’s more, the dividends from doing so need not be decades away; the right action now – for example, for those joining the workforce within a few years – can deliver better health, opportunity and growth within this parliament.”Dr Jamie O’Halloran, a senior research fellow at the IPPR, said: “The earlier we address both physical and mental health challenges for children, the more likely we can prevent costly health conditions and worklessness later in life. This is not just a matter of improving individual lives, but also of alleviating long-term pressures on the state.”A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “As this report demonstrates, prevention is better than cure. That’s why this week, we expanded access to mental health teams in schools to almost an extra million children.“We are investing an extra £680 million for mental health services, recruiting 8,500 extra mental health workers, and delivering an extra 345,000 talking therapies.“Through our Plan for Change, we will tackle the mental health crisis and give every child a healthy start to life.”

Sue Griffin was an active 68-year-old, retraining to become a nurse and indulging her love of horse riding, when she began to experience breathing difficulties, such as breathlessness. “She was then diagnosed with asthma, and was going to see an asthma nurse,” her daughter Kirstie Campbell recalls.But despite treatment, it soon became apparent that Griffin’s symptoms were not improving. “She was getting more and more breathless as time was progressing,” Campbell says. “She struggled doing things with the horses as well, she’d always done everything herself. She was getting fairly frustrated with herself, thinking that she was just turning into an old lady really quickly.”Griffin’s breathing difficulties seriously progressed in 2021 and, after phoning 111, she was admitted to hospital and seen by the cardiology ward, where she was diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis. Her aortic valve, which controls blood moving from the heart to the body, was restricting blood flow. This causes it to become narrow, resulting in symptoms such as shortness of breath and chest pain.“She stayed [in hospital] for a few days and it became apparent how serious her condition was,” Campbell says. “It was made worse by the fact that she was anaemic. She was told she needed the procedure asap, but was still told to go home and wait for the hospital to be in contact within the next two weeks for an appointment.”The procedure, known as transcatheter aortic valve implantation (Tavi), is used to replace the valve without open heart surgery. Griffin was still waiting for her procedure to be scheduled when her condition suddenly declined, leading to her death in hospital.According to research by Valve for Life UK, up to 8.2% of patients on the elective Tavi waiting list die before being able to receive treatment, with some centres reporting a mortality rate as high as 20%. “Everyone on the waiting list for this procedure needs it and is urgent, and they’re all just a ticking timebomb, unfortunately,” Campbell says.“It comes as no surprise that the figure is as high as it is, and I think it comes down purely to [the lack of] early diagnosis. Once they’ve got the diagnosis, they’re already gravely ill,” she says. “What I’m finding really sad is that it’s all been missed.”But, for Campbell, one of the hardest things to process is the fact that, if her mother had been able to have the procedure scheduled, the outcome may have been different.“Knowing and listening to the surgeon who could have performed the surgery on my mum, and hearing him saying [during the inquest] there is a 1% mortality rate to this surgery that could have saved her life is extraordinary,” she says. “She was so fit, so well and so stoic, and she was my everything in my life. I worked with her for the last 40-odd years and spoke to her every day.”She added: “Since then, I’ve lost myself as well because I don’t have the one person that I can trust and belong to. It’s hit me in a huge way that I didn’t think was possible. Everything is more transient because I’ve lost the biggest person in my life and that’s what I struggle to get over.”