Book review: The mental health needs of children & young people: guiding you to key issues and practices in CAMHS

This book would be useful to nursing students, student social workers and staff new to children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) teams. It is well referenced, and each chapter ends with policy information, web resources and key summaries. Being a short reference guide, it is difficult to criticise what has been left out. However, more information on normative children and young person development from a physiological, psychological and social perspective, and how development may be affected as a result of early trauma and mental illness, could have been included. The chapter on interventions is good, but CAMHS teams should be aware that the frontal lobes of the brain are not fully developed until the age of 25, so any therapeutic intervention should consider the impact of trauma and mental illness on the developing brain.