Modern medicine increasingly judges itself by long-term outcomes. In cancer care, we routinely compare treatments according to whether patients survive longer. In cardiology, we ask whether interventions prevent future heart attacks and extend life. This long-term data allows healthcare to continually improve.

Child and adolescent mental health services are different. Long-term outcomes have received little attention. Success, instead, is largely judged using measures such as waiting times, access targets and short-term symptom improvements.

These are important indicators of service performance. But they cannot tell us whether children’s lives have actually improved beyond the very short term.

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) were founded on the idea that helping children early could change the course of their lives. Yet we rarely measure whether that actually happens.

A new study my colleagues and I conducted provides one of the most detailed long-term pictures to date of the clinical outcomes for young people who attended Camhs in........

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