Nearly 80% of parents are worried about their child’s mental health, a survey has revealed.

According to a survey of 1,009 Mumsnet users with children aged 5 to 17, 77% of parents expressed concerns about their child’s mental health and almost a third reported being very concerned.

Among the greatest pressures impacting children’s mental health, parents highlighted social media and online content (76%), bullying and friendship problems (46%), and academic pressure (44%).

Despite 87% of respondents saying they believe children face more mental health pressures than they did before, only 3% of parents think the Government is successfully supporting children’s mental health, with 39% confirming that they think it is being supported ‘very poorly’.

Results of the survey have been used to inform the new Future Minds roadmap, which delivers an action plan to help the Government rectify the children’s mental health system, produced through a collaboration between Centre for Mental Health, Centre for Young Lives, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition and YoungMinds.

The research highlights the prevalence of mental health conditions among young people, affecting one in five of those aged 8 to 25, with young women aged 17 to 25 facing mental health problems at double the rate of young men the same age.

With mental health services ‘struggling to keep pace’ with rising need, the plan proposes that three points outlined by the Government’s 10 Year Plan for Health have ‘critical applicability in youth mental health’: shifting care from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.

Further recommendations of the report include boosting investment in mental health support within youth services, expanded social prescribing, multi-year funding for Integrated Care Boards, and a broadened Mental Health Support Teams model to ensure more support is offered for neurodiverse young people.

It also suggests widening pilots for young people with mental health needs to help them into work, as well as delivering open access mental health support in each community, for example, through Young Futures hubs.

Andy Bell, CEO of Centre for Mental Health, said: ‘The mental health of children and young people is under unprecedented strain. It is disrupting education, limiting future employment, driving up public service costs, and threatening the UK’s long-term prosperity. Too little is done to prevent mental health problems in childhood.’

He argued that fixing the problem should be ‘at the heart of the Government’s moral mission to change the course for this generation’.

‘By prioritising prevention, early intervention, and both clinical and nonclinical support - and by building on existing good practice and emerging evidence - we can close the treatment gap and reduce growing levels of need, ensuring children get help earlier and more effectively’, he added.

Cllr Amanda Hopgood, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Children, Young People and Families Committee said: ‘To truly tackle the children’s mental health crisis, there should be a cross-government plan to support children and young people alongside adequate funding for children’s services.

‘Mental health training also needs to become a core element of training for all staff that support children and young people.’