The NHS is facing a meltdown in mental health services with a lack of staff and more than a million people waiting to be seen.

With pressure constantly mounting, the country faces a potential timebomb of problems. However, determined to help people across Kent have stepped into the breach. For Mental Health Awareness Week, Keely Greenwood finds out how.

Last Christmas Dean and his wife Jodie were excitedly waiting for their newborn child.

The couple had recently married, moved house and were ready to start a family. Everything was looking good.

But then, they miscarried. Shortly after, Jodie was diagnosed with cancer.

The 34-year-old had an extremely rare molar pregnancy which had turned into gestational trophoblastic disease.

A tumour had grown from the tissue that formed in her womb during pregnancy and was cancerous.

You feel like you always have to be the backbone and be supportive of other people’

The devoted husband put all his efforts into looking after her and ensuring she was OK.

“We didn’t really have time to process the miscarriage. It was all about trying to get her better,” he said. “I just thought, ‘I’m ok’.”

But he was struggling. Dean, who has always suffered with his mental health, wasn’t offered emotional support and fears over long waiting lists and high costs put him off reaching out to the NHS.

And he’s right to have these fears.

According to the British Medical Association, health services are not currently resourced to meet the increase in demand, resulting in long waits and high thresholds for treatment.

Latest estimates put the mental health waiting list at 1.2 million people across the country.

The number of children and young people in contact with mental health services has increased by 353% since April 2016. Meanwhile, the number of doctors in child and adolescent psychiatry has only increased by 19%.

There is a one in seven (14%) vacancies in mental health staff.

Within NHS mental health nursing, the vacancy rate is even higher, at 16%.

Government data published on March 1 revealed 68% of people saw an improvement after receiving treatment.

Patients offered talking therapies waited an average of 24.7 days to receive their first treatment, but 57.3 for the second.

Fortunately for Hoo resident Dean, he found the help he needed in the most unlikely of places - his local barber.

No Bad Days in St Mary’s Island was set up by Jake Cox three years ago as a safe space for people to get much-needed emotional support.

Having suffered with his own mental health issues, the 30-year-old wanted to create a service that could help people while giving them a trim.

“It is a gateway to help people to talk,” he said.

Working alongside mental health charity North Kent Mind, Jake is now planning to expand the service to fellow barbers across the county.

He is running a free workshop on June 24 at St Mary’s Island Community Centre. Click this link for a place on the course.

He is hoping to replicate the safe space he’s created at barbers across the community.

“There are not a lot of places you can go where you can talk openly. If every library, cafe and hairdressers was to offer a safe space and had staff trained in mental health awareness think how many people could be helped.

“Sometimes people just need to have a conversation and realise other people are going through the same and they are not alone.”

He said it was not about training barbers to be counsellors, but just giving them an awareness of how to react and where to direct people.

When Dean sat in the barber’s chair he found himself opening up like never before.

“After the miscarriage, there was no support,” he said. “As a man you feel like you have to be the backbone and be supportive of other people.

“I was sent away with no coping strategies. No one told me the emotions I would be going through and what I could do. I just thought I would get over it.

‘Sometimes people just need to have a conversation and realise other people are going through the same’

“Sometimes it is just as simple as having someone to talk to who is not your parents or someone who you are close to. Someone who is not going to judge and is going to listen if you want to talk about deep stuff.

“You leave feeling like you have had a therapy session rather than just a haircut.”

For 41-year-old Laura Cordell her mental health problems started when she was just eight.

After the death of her sister and her grandparents in a short space of time, she developed crippling OCD, depression, anxiety and panic attacks.

She said: “I felt if I didn’t put the wipers down on my car or little things like that, then my whole family would die and it would be my fault. It’s not logical but it was my waking thought, every waking minute.

“I felt like I was carrying the survival of everyone I loved on my shoulders 24/7.”

She said she would hurt herself as a way of coping with the thoughts.

“It was almost my way of letting the feelings out,” she said.

She created the Kindness and Well-Being support group in her hometown of Dartford for people who were looking for support.

‘So much of this country's mental health crisis could be avoided if people received the right help in a reasonable time frame and weren't dismissed’

“One of the reasons I started it was because so many are struggling with their physical or mental health and not getting the support they need, when they need it,” she said.

“I regularly meet people who tell me they are being turned away from services due to “not being severe enough”.

“However, all the time people aren’t getting the support they need, the severity increases rapidly.

“People are essentially being told they can’t be helped until it’s tragically too late.

“We offer a peer support group in person for £3 a week and free online Facebook group open to everyone to get support before things escalate.

“So much of this country’s mental health crisis could be avoided if people received the right help in a reasonable timeframe and weren’t dismissed.

“There’s no criteria or judgement. We aim to help people as quickly as possible.”

This need for more help has been acknowledged by the government which is investing millions to boost support.

In January 2023, the Department for Health and Social Care pledged £150 million to build 150 new facilities to support mental health urgent and emergency care services.

In March, a new £12.6m unit opened in Maidstone to replace Ruby Ward at Medway hospital.

The new site has 16 beds, two more than the old unit, as well as dedicated spaces for counselling, group therapy, and creative activities, alongside facilities to help people relearn essential skills such as cooking and cleaning.

Work is being done to help ease the pressure, but the numbers of people in need keeps rising, something Dr Manpinder Singh Sahota has noticed at his surgery in Pelham Medical Practice in Gravesend.

He says most GP surgeries have a medical health practitioner who will spend one-hour appointments talking to a patient suffering from mild depression or anxiety, offering them coping strategies and referring them to counselling.

But once they are referred they face lengthy waiting lists.

“They can wait up to six months,” he said.

If the case is more severe he said the doctor will refer to a mental health team such as CAMHS (the NHS Children and Adolescents Mental Health Service). But the waiting list is also long.

Dr Singh Sahota said he wished they could do more: “GPs will offer a double appointment to talk to someone presenting with mental health issues, but it would be great if we could get them quicker access to counselling or treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy.”

For confidential support on an emotional issue, call Samaritans on 116 123 at any time or click here to visit the website.

If you want to talk to someone confidentially, click here.

Until things improve there are plenty of organisations that can help people in need.

One of those is a charity set up by the parents of teenager Elliott Holmes.

He took his own life when he was just 19 after a long battle with mental health issues.

In his honour, the Elliott Holmes Memorial Fund was set up to help with the demand.

It’s worked in the community to act as a support network for those waiting for NHS support and 83% of the funding is raised by the community.

Step-dad Peter Scutts explained: “The fund is a collective effort by the community to bridge the gap in NHS mental health services due to an overwhelming increase in demand during the past seven years.

“It stands as a beacon of hope, demonstrating the profound difference that fast, direct access to dedicated support can make in the lives of young individuals facing mental health challenges.

“Our collaboration with Gravesham schools, local leisure centres, Gravesham council, Kent Police, Darent Valley Hospital and Ebbsfleet United is a testament to the importance of communities coming together and doing something positive to address this issue and making a difference locally.”