CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 9Mental Health Treatment and AccessPsychiatric care and mental health servicesPsychology and Mental Health

“Where am I meant to go from here?”: Young people’s experiences of navigating referral processes, waiting lists and access pathways in mental health services

Open access
Lynch, Louise, Moorhead, Anne, Long, Maggie, Steele, Isobel Hawthorne·2025·Children and Youth Services Review
DOI 10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108248
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Background Early intervention for mental health problems during youth can contribute to increased quality of life and the reduction in the rates of youth death by suicide. Young people often wait until their distress becomes severe before seeking help and service factors have been identified as impactful in how they access helping interventions. Objective This aim of this research was to explore young people’s experiences of accessing mental health services and the interventions provided. Methods Constructivist Grounded Theory methods (Charmaz, 2014) were used to analyse data collected from young people (n = 18) aged 16–25 years and living in the North West of Ireland, exploring their mental health help-seeking experiences to services. Data were collected through a focus group (n = 6) and interviews (n = 14), with two participants taking part in both. Findings Two sub-categories were identified, 1. Navigating administration and 2. Accessing helping interventions , and key findings demonstrate that accessing services can be difficult due to convoluted service pathways that can include lengthy referral processes and waiting lists, especially within public healthcare systems. Actual help-seeking pathways were mapped, and analysis revealed the existence of a ‘referral loop’ where young people with severe distress were continuously referred without interim support, which was found to contribute to suicidality and disproportionately affect care-experienced youth. The most common interventions included psychopharmaceuticals and CBT. Participants reported valuing interventions that included collaboration and listening ear support most. Conclusion Ensuring that young people and their families have easier access to developmentally appropriate interventions and timely responses from services is essential in supporting young people with their mental health problems and improving their quality of life, which can reduce negative life outcomes, including death by suicide.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108248

Cites

117 of 117 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Clark, T., Foster, L., Bryman, A., & Sloan, L. (2021). Bryman ' s social research methods . Oxford university press. http://refhub.elsevier.com/S0190-7409(2500131-8/optaGzuV5suH6)
  2. Podina, I. R., Mogoase, C., David, D., Szentagotai, A., & Dobrean, A. (2016). http://refhub.elsevier.com/S0190-7409(2500131-8/h0450)
  3. Vandermause R., (2007) Multidisciplinary multi-media multiple-method interpretative research: challenges in getting started. Presented at the 8th International, Interdisciplinary Advances in Qualitative Methods Conference, Banff, Canada.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Lynch, L., Moorhead, A., Long, M., & Steele, I. H.
Affiliations
University of Ulster (GB)
Corresponding author
Lynch, Louise
ORCID
Venue
Children and Youth Services Review
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2025-05
Volume
172
Pages
108248
ISSN
0190-7409 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108248
OpenAlex
W4408668459
Cited by
7
References
115
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 2
FWCI
7.76
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Children and Youth Services Review (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Ulster University Research Portal (Ulster University) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychiatric care and mental health services
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychology and Mental Health
Keywords
youth mental health, help-seeking, access to mental health care, referral process, waiting lists, suicidality, early intervention, psychopharmacology, cognitive behavioral therapy, service pathways, youth experiences

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review