by Bill Heaney
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today said that the SNP “cannot be trusted with your health” as he revealed that a key standard for providing follow-up care is being breached for thousands of psychiatric patients.
It comes as part of a wider investigation by the Scottish Liberal Democrats into the state of mental health services.
Patients who have been discharged from an inpatient psychiatric ward are supposed to receive face-to-face, online or over-the-phone assessments by a mental health practitioner within 7 calendar days.
This is included in Scottish Government guidance, which highlights that ‘suicide prevention literature shows the first 7 days after discharge from inpatient psychiatry to be a high-risk period.’
However, a freedom of information request submitted to all of Scotland’s health boards revealed that in 2024/25:
- 2,092 patients waited longer than 14 days for follow-up care- an increase of 1,990 patients in 2022/23.
- This included 618 patients in NHS Fife, 560 patients in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, 363 in NHS Tayside and 331 in NHS Lothian.
- In NHS Tayside, 823 psychiatric patients received no follow-up at all.
A separate freedom of information request by the party also found that in 2024/25:
- A psychiatric inpatient waited 330 days for follow-up care in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, while the longest a patient waited in NHS Grampian was 328 days.
- The average waiting time was more than 7 days in NHS Grampian, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, NHS Highland and NHS Lothian.
- In NHS Lothian, the average waiting time for follow-up care was 31 days.
“People are often extremely vulnerable when they have just been released from care. If the right processes are not in place during that transition, it could lead to their mental state deteriorating, to self-harm and, in the very worst cases, to suicide.
“Psychiatric inpatients should not be facing excruciatingly long waits for follow-up care. We need to end these horrific delays.
“Scottish Liberal Democrats are the party of mental health. From recruiting and retaining mental health staff to creating walk-in services for those in distress or crisis, we have a vision for change with fairness at its heart.
“At this election, every vote for the Scottish Liberal Democrats on the second, peach, regional ballot paper is a vote to deliver world-class mental health services.”
You can read more about this story here
You can find the results of the freedom of information request here
One of the Scottish Government’s six mental health quality indicators monitors the percentage of all discharged psychiatric inpatients followed up by community mental health services within 7 days. You can read more about that here.
Public Health Scotland defines a psychiatric patient in terms of the indicator of seven-day follow-up care as follows:
“Any patient admitted to a hospital psychiatric inpatient ward, including the following specialities: General Psychiatry; Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Forensic Psychiatry; Psychiatry of Old Age; Learning Disability and Psychotherapy.”
It also defines community mental health services as follows:
“Care and support which can be accessed without the need to be admitted to an inpatient hospital ward. Follow up means a one-to-one assessment face to face, or using digital or telephonic tech by a mental health practitioner, who could be a psychiatrist, mental health nurse, psychologist, other allied health professionals, as well as social workers and mental health officers.”
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