More than 200,000 people are on mental health waiting lists in Yorkshire

Analysis by the Labour Party said that 55,875 of these are children who are waiting months or years to access Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

Waiting lists for mental health are similarly high across England, standing at 1.8 million, with almost 500,000 children whose mental health is at risk of deteriorating in time left without support.

Last month the sisters of a man from Sheffield who killed their elderly parents during a psychotic episode said they believe broken mental health services contributed to their deaths.

Sally Andrews told a sentencing hearing for her brother James Andrews, that he had remained on waiting lists and had fallen between the gaps of social and health services when his mother suffered 82 stab wounds using a German bayonet in November 2022.

The analysis comes after research last year from Young Minds suggested that as many as one in four young people stuck on lengthy waiting lists had tried to take their own life, while separate work by the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggested that three quarters of people in similar circumstances had to resort to emergency services for their mental health.

Rishi Sunak and his health ministers have made tackling waiting lists a top priority in recent months after it was adopted as one of his five key pledges at the start of the year.

Earlier this month the Government announced £250mi for the NHS to tackle waiting lists, including specialist mental health ambulances to deliver quicker support this winter.

However, NHS figures have warned the Prime Minister that his pledge will be difficult to meet, in part due to the impact of strike action across the country during the cost of living crisis which has seen the number of hospital appointments cancelled rise to around one million.

Last month the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned that pressure on staff and a shortage of workers are holding back improvements to NHS mental health services.

Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health, said: “ It is heartbreaking that patients are being left waiting months or even years for support, their mental health often deteriorating to crisis point in the meantime. The system is failing patients and they have nowhere else to turn.

“The Government must tackle the rising waiting lists to ensure everyone can access treatment in a timely manner. Instead, they have scrapped their 10 year mental health plan and put reforming the Mental Health Act on the backburner.

Separate analysis by the party suggested that an estimated 121,000 patients died while waiting for NHS treatment in England last year.

However, this was rejected by the NHS who said it was “misleading” to suggest that there is a link between waiting for elective treatments and deaths.

“Our hardworking staff have made significant progress bringing down long waits for elective care, and nationally the NHS is working with the most challenged trusts to ensure patients continue to see reductions in waiting times right across the country, with patients who have been waiting the longest and those with the highest clinical need prioritised,” a spokesperson added.

But Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting , Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Record numbers of people are spending their final months in pain and agony, waiting for treatment that never arrives.

“The basic promise of the NHS - that it will be there for us when we need it – has been broken. The longer the Conservatives are in office, the longer patients will wait.”