Mental health support

Find groups and charities who can support you and your mental health on our Family Information Directory.

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Dorset offers assessment and treatment to children and young people up to the age of 18, as well as their families and carers. The teams that provide these services include doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, psychologists and social workers.

See our Family Information Directory for more about CAMHS in Dorset.

CAMHS Gateway

The CAMHS Gateway undertakes assessments for all referrals received by CAMHS and provides brief interventions for lower-level symptoms such as anxiety and depression. If patients need more help or have more moderate or severe symptoms CAMHS Gateway transfers you to the regular CAMHS teams.

We're running the CAMHS Gateway service in the east of Dorset initially, covering Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. We hope to roll the service out to the rest of Dorset eventually. If you have a Dorset GP continue to refer in the usual way.

Intellectual Disability (ID) CAMHS

This service works with children with a diagnosis of a learning disability who in educational terms have severe or moderate learning difficulties, and in addition, present with any of the following:

  • significant aggression or challenging behaviours putting the child or others at risk
  • mental illness or significant mental health problem

Find out more about ID CAMHS.