Suicide now biggest killer of 10 to 17-year-olds as major parliamentary committee into the mental health crisis hears that NHS support services are ‘broken’18:36, 02 Sep 2026Updated 18:37, 02 Sep 2026Suicide is now the biggest killer of teenagers as NHS mental health services are “broken”, MPs have been told.The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) told a major parliamentary committee that “our children are dying on our watch”. It came a day after data from Freedom of Information requests released to the RCPCH showed children as young as six are turning up in A&E in mental health crisis.A joint session of the health and education select committees was called to discuss the generational challenge of soaring rates of self harm and eating disorders as well as growing NHS waits for mental health care. It heard kids in mental distress are living in children’s hospitals for months.Dr Samantha Jones, the RCPCH’s mental health officer and a paediatrician who has worked in A&Es for 20 years, said: “I've been a paediatrician for too long, and when I was training the 10-to-17-year-old group were vulnerable from sepsis, malignancy, and what was called ‘risk-taking behaviour’ [...such as] road traffic accidents."We've had public investment into road safety and education and support for young people, but the highest rate of mortality in this day and age for our 10-to-17-year-olds is death by suicide… our children are dying on our watch from their mental health distress.”Samaritans says around 200 people aged under 18 take their own lives every year and three quarters are boys. Often problems persist into adulthood and annual data from 2017 showed 1,588 people aged under 35 took their own lives.Dr Jones said children remain on children’s wards for “not just days and weeks, but for months in hospitals”. She said social care services in crisis sometimes “just turn up with a child with two black bin bags and their belongings and come into an A&E and go: ‘We're out - who's looking after them?’”NHS England data released to the RCPCH showed 75,491 patients aged six to 17 attended A&Es with a mental health issue in 2025, up from 55,525 in 2019. The rise was highest among children aged six to nine, surging by 62% in this period from 3,870 in 2019 to 6,269 in 2025.Helen Hayes MP, chair of the House of Commons Education Committee, said: “Children's mental health services are broken. I think when we look at what is happening in our A&E departments, we see a service that is broken. All of us know examples of much, much, much longer waits [than 12 hours] and that in an environment that is further traumatising for them and not at all suitable.”Vanessa Longley, the chief executive of Beat Eating Disorders, told the committee that children are being passed between different NHS services - none of which are taking responsibility for their overall care. She said that because of this they often end up in crisis in A&E, adding: “We are designing crisis into our system.”Dr Jones said schools and different NHS and social care services often do not share information on children going through mental health crises. She added: “There's the wider economic impact in terms of not just for that young person and the educational attainment for them, but it's parents who will need to take time out of work, may even stop working.“There's the siblings [and] the ripple effect for a family. When we're looking at the economics of this, it is far-reaching. There is the mountain of here and now, and then there's absolutely the preventative stuff. But if we don't do them in parallel, we'll fail probably one to two generations of families and young people.”The committee heard from one of the leaders of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). It is the NHS mental health service that includes nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. Some children face years on the waiting list for CAMHS support.Dr Sachin Sankar, the clinical lead for CAMHS in the East Midlands, told how younger children in the earlier stages of mental health problems are often just missing basic support and shouldn’t be taken into hospitals. Dr Sankar said: “Children should have a proper universal assessment to look at where the issue is. And then they should be getting support for that.“Imagine a child who, it might be something as simple as he doesn't have breakfast when he comes to school? His behaviour is going to be terrible. He's going to feel more wretched about himself. A child who's coming to school who's not potty trained and the school doesn't have proper facilities, so he is sitting in his dirty diaper the whole day. How do you expect that child to behave?”He added: “If, like Freud said, if they turn it outward, externalise it, it comes out as violence. When they turn it inward, it becomes depression and violence towards themselves such as self harm. And the incidence of both has gone up significantly.”Article continues belowFor mental health support, contact the Samaritans on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.