By Bill Heaney
Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today said that Scotland needs world-class mental health services after research by his party uncovered shocking waits for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) across many of Scotland’s health boards.
Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information requests to health boards reveal that:
- Patients in NHS Lothian, NHS Highland, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Orkney are currently waiting more than a year to be seen by CAMHS. The longest a patient has been waiting is 1,100 days in NHS Lothian.
- The same health boards also saw patients waiting more than a year to start treatment in 2023/24. The longest a patient waited was 1,600 days in NHS Lothian, while a patient waited 1,086 days in NHS Lanarkshire.
- 35 patients in NHS Highland and 16 patients in NHS Lothian waited more than two years to start CAMHS treatment.
- At least 52 patients in NHS Lothian, 33 patients in NHS Highland, 10 patients in NHS Lanarkshire and 25 patients in NHS Orkney are currently waiting more than a year to start CAMHS treatment.
Mr Cole-Hamilton, right, said: “If children and young people are waiting years for help, their mental health will simply deteriorate.
“The SNP have spent 17 years ignoring the scale of the mental health crisis. They have repeatedly raided tens of millions from the mental health budget, adding to the agony of everyone waiting to be seen.
“Scottish Liberal Democrats are the party of mental health. We want to drive down waiting times by installing more counsellors in schools and rolling out more specialists in GP surgeries and A&E departments near to you.
“Scotland deserves world-class mental health services. That’s why my party will continue to put pressure on the government to ensure everyone struggling receives the support and care they need.”
Meanwhile, Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has urged the SNP Government to finally combat pressures faced by nurses and midwives, after research by his party revealed that nearly 800,000 days of nursing and midwifery staff time have been lost to mental ill health since 2020.
Freedom of information requests submitted by the Scottish Liberal Democrats to all of Scotland’s health boards revealed that:
- In the past four years, 762,975 days of nursing and midwifery staff time have been lost to mental ill health. This is the equivalent of 2,090 years.
- NHS Lanarkshire reported the highest number of nursing and midwifery days lost to mental ill health last year (2023/24), with a total of 24,342 days.
- NHS Fife also reported a high number of days lost to mental health absences in 2023/24, with a total of 22,481 days lost.
Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “Ever since Nicola Sturgeon cut nursing training places and claimed that was somehow ‘sensible’, nursing staff have faced a raft of pressures. These figures show that many of them now feel completely overwhelmed. This matters because when nurses are stressed and run off their feet, they are in no position to provide the highest quality care for their patients.
“The Health Secretary is making things even worse by sticking with the government’s botched NHS Recovery Plan – a plan that is failing staff, patients and services every single day.
“Nurses and midwives need solutions, not yet more years of SNP mismanagement.
“The government must urgently rewrite their failed recovery plan so that it prioritises the recruitment and retention of hardworking staff. That means taking measures to tackle burnout and creating a health and social care staff assembly to put to use the expertise of those who know our health service best.”