“And it's just a move that I wish I didn't have to make but I've got to”: making sense of young people’s journeys from child and adolescent mental health services

Background: Young people who are using Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are required to be to be discharged from those services when they reach 18 or earlier if they leave school. Those who have continuing mental health needs are often transferred to Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS). Given the potential importance of this period, this study explored young people’s lived experiences of the transition process. Method: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with young people (n=6) who were currently undergoing the transition out of CAMHS. A qualitative methodology, Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), was employed to elicit and analyse their experiences. Results: Four superordinate themes captured the contrast between CAMHS and AMHS; young people’s struggle with uncertainty; a sense of being left versus letting go; and the different stages of the transition process. Conclusions: The transition out of CAMHS is a significant life event for young people amid the wider transitions they are negotiating as they enter adulthood. In addition to yielding young people’s experiences of service transition, important insights into this group making sense of the wider transition to adulthood may also have emerged. Key Practitioner Message • Service transition is more than the act of transfer. • Young people experienced a sense of loss of the familiarity of CAMHS, struggled with uncertainty or ‘the unknown’, and experienced a myriad of emotions at different stages of the process. • Clinicians could support young people to use the focal service transition process as a model to learn about concurrent and future life transitions