ANYONE facing mental health issues will tell you about the awful situation they can find themselves in. Not only are they facing the challenges of their illness but often they feel embarrassed about their problems. As a result they just don’t talk about them and their situation deteriorates, often at an frightening speed. My colleague Norman Lamb only found out about his own son’s mental health problems after he had been experiencing them for three years.

One of the reasons they don’t talk about their issues is that we, the general public, even their friends and family, can be less than understanding. Mental health is not understood at all well. There is a common belief, particularly among men, that things can be solved by simply “pulling yourself together”. The fact that men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women would seem to suggest this isn’t a clever approach.

It is fair to say also that even when we do want to help someone we can easily do exactly the wrong thing. If someone is depressed we can try to get them out of themselves by trying to force them along to social events when that is the very opposite of what they want to do. The very act of pressing them can even make them feel guilty and cause them to withdraw even more.

Then when they do seek help from our NHS, the situation they find there is far from what they should expect. The resources spent on mental health are at nothing like the same level as those spent on physical illnesses.

During the coalition government, Nick Clegg fought to get agreement to an extra £250m a year for children’s mental health care over the five years from 2015. But even by the first year this fell to £143m as the remaining money was siphoned off to support other parts of our creaking NHS.

On top of all of this we have found out recently that even within our own county, the treatment our children can expect for mental health can vary wildly. About 1 in 10 children aged between 5 and 16 suffer from a diagnosable mental health problem; the numbers of children admitted to hospital because of self-harm has risen by 68 per cent over the past 10 years. Yet in the south of Cumbria children experiencing mental health issues could only access the crisis service 9 to 5, five days a week. In the north of the county they obviously care more about the mental health of their children as there you can access the same service until 8pm during the week and at weekends as well.

Which is why I am particularly proud that our campaign to get equal treatment for our children in this part of the county has been successful. The funds needed to pay for the extra hours have been found and the staff needed are being recruited.

It’s just disappointing, but I guess unsurprising, that it took a campaign to make this happen.