Charity SAMH blasts progress on suicide and mental health services in Scotland

The charity is today launching a manifesto, based on feedback from 2,500 people, setting out its priorities for the next Scottish parliamentary term.

It notes that despite a £4 million investment to recruit an additional 80 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) workers, young people are still waiting more two months on average to be seen, with one in five people referred to the service rejected.

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These rejections "often happen after a paper-based referral without any in-person contact" said the charity, with children feeling "like they have to be in crisis, which often means feeling suicidal or self-harming, in order to get help".

One young person told the charity they had waited a year for a CAMHS assessment which "lasted 20 minutes".

They said: "It was the school nurse who told me a few weeks later that I wasn’t being referred, they never sent me a letter.

"I asked why not and apparently it was because I wasn’t suicidal. But they never asked if I was suicidal."

Suicide rates in Scotland have been rising in the past two years

Mr Watson said it was"hard to think of another parallel" in healthcare where patients have to deteriorate before they meet the benchmark for referral, at a time when the NHS is promoting early detection and intervention for disease.

"We were promised that there was going to be parity of esteem between physical and mental health, but it just hasn't happened,"said Mr Watson.

The charity is particularly concerned about increases in suicide in 2018 and 2019, reversing a more or less steady decline over the previous 15 years.

Rates are highest among males aged 35 to 54, but there has also been a "worrying" rise in young people taking their lives.

There are fears that the pandemic may have contributed to a further increase in suicides during 2020, but official data will not be available until the summer.

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"The absence of real-time data and analysis is an issue that concerns us," said Mr Watson. "It takes far too long for us to understand the current situation as it's emerging in and around Scotland."

In its manifesto, SAMH is calling for a 10-year strategy to combat suicide, which claims two lives every day in Scotland.

This should "include actions on reducing suicide stigma, understanding the drivers of suicide and means restriction, in particular medicine management", said the charity.

It said there was also an "unacceptable lack of clarity" over the long-term availability of suicide prevention training through the evidence-based ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) and safeTALK training packages, which currently have fewer than 150 trainers each.

The report said: "We want the next Scottish Government to retain the ASIST and safeTALK courses, and double the number of trainers by the end of the next parliamentary term."

SAMH welcomed the creation of community-based Mental Health Assessment Centres during the pandemic and said these should form the basis of a continued rapid triage system "so that GPs and other health professionals can have confidence that people will be connected to appropriate support quickly".

This will require "increased in investment in community health and social care budgets", said the charity, noting that Audit Scotland reports show that "the share of expenditure for community based support has remained unchanged since 2012/13".

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The charity also called on the next Government to "immediately double" investment in community mental wellbeing services for children and young people.

The current Scottish Government has committed £17 million over two years, but SAMH said this "amounts to 0.1 per cent of local government funding, with no clear plan to fund the service beyond 2023".

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “SAMH is a valued partner in the work we are doing to improve mental health services and the issues raised in this report are common goals for all of us to address.

“These are important topics which we will continue to consider as part of the wide ranging improvements we are introducing across Scotland to ensure everyone can access the right support at the right time, and that people do not postpone getting treatment for mental health conditions until they become a serious illness.”