As you may remember I wrote to the UK government asking what their plans were with regards to funding mental health services and what changes they planned on making. Today I had a reply from the Scottish government stating their plans for Scotland's mental health strategy which is due to be changed this year.
Dear Angela,
Thank you for your email and apologies for the delay in my response to you.
The SNP Scottish Government has recently announced a new £100 million fund to improve mental health services, which will be spread over 5 years.
The fund will be used to further improve child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) services and extend access to psychological therapies and other services. The fund will also focus on better responses to mental health in primary care, promoting wellbeing through physical activity, and improving patient rights, which is one of the elements of the forthcoming Mental Health Bill.
Scotland was the first country in the UK to introduce a waiting times target for access to psychological therapies. Before the SNP Government introduced this target, there was no robust national data on how Scotland performed for Psychological treatment. By setting these targets we can demonstrate how in Scotland we truly give mental health parity with other health services in what we do as well as in what we say.
The SNP Scottish Government has introduced a new Mental Health (Scotland) Bill to the Scottish Parliament. The overarching aim of this legislation is to ensure that people with a mental health disorder are able to access effective treatment quickly and easily. We are also seeking to introduce further measures under this Bill to continue to protect and promote the human rights of mentally ill patients.
When the new Mental Health (Scotland) Bill is in force, it will provide a much improved legislative system to help treat and care for people with a mental health disorder. The amendments will remove unnecessary procedures and make existing processes more efficient for both patients and health professionals.
I hope this information is helpful for you.
Kind Regards,
Rachel
I am very happy to hear they plan on investing so much into improving services, £20M a year is a great start and I am even more delighted that they want to improve access to CAMHS.