Hansard

I welcome the opportunity to close in this debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats for allocating some of their time to this crucial topic. I wish that we had all afternoon to discuss it.

Donald Cameron opened his speech by pointing out that there was a mental health crisis in Scotland long before the Covid pandemic, with unacceptably long waiting times for mental health treatments, as well as chronic workforce pressures. This debate is nothing new and the issues have been rehearsed in the chamber many times. Of course, the Covid pandemic has exacerbated the crisis hugely.

I heard a child and adolescent psychiatrist claim that the number of young people who are seeking help with their mental health has “skyrocketed”. Dr Omer Moghraby has reported seeing young people presenting to accident and emergency after having taken overdoses or cut themselves severely. Some have changed their eating patterns so severely that they have lost a lot of weight, and medical colleagues have had to take measures to save their lives. He said:

“The closure of schools, the lack of contact with friends and stopping all sports activities is having a particularly damaging effect on children.

One can only say the major factor across it all is pandemic - the lack of activities, the lack of schooling, the lack of opportunities for these young people and probably a deterioration of wellbeing of their parents not being able to cope.”

I thought that that last phrase, “the deterioration of wellbeing” of parents was very powerful, and we have to consider that as a contributory factor to a child’s mental health.

In Dr Moghraby’s considerations, we see the lack of physical activity as a significant contributor to poor mental health. For me, that highlights two aspects of how the crisis must be tackled: timely interventions for those caught in a state of poor mental health, and, of course, how we prevent people from falling into poor mental health in the first place—how we ensure that people have a coping mechanism. The latter aspect is why music, sport, art and drama are so important as a conduit into social interaction. Opportunity to participate has been eroded over the years, especially in less affluent areas, and that has been exacerbated by the Covid lockdown. I do not apologise for once again highlighting the need to focus on prevention.

The importance of the third sector is always underestimated and underresourced by the Government. There are so many fantastic organisations with specific skills that are under extreme financial pressure. All the while, CAMHS are under intolerable pressure, which has led to more than 1,000 children in desperate need of help waiting more than a year.

Mental health is an acute health issue, and we need to understand how investment finally gets to the third sector. The Health and Sport Committee reported that it is difficult to track progress of individual integration authorities’ spending on mental health, which creates difficulty in tracking progress against the Scottish Government’s commitment to mental health support services. Although the extra finance is very welcome, we must be able to track where that investment goes and measure that against outcomes.

There is so much that we could discuss and debate regarding a real solution. In the Government’s amendment, we see the reason why so little progress has been made by the SNP during its time in office. Instead of accepting that there is a mental health crisis and tackling it head on, the SNP instead tries to shift blame yet again on to the UK Government. To the Scottish Government, that is the job done. It has no ability to take responsibility for a crisis that has been a long time in the making. It is a crisis that, in my view, is linked to drug-related deaths, of which Scotland has the worst number in Europe. That is what happens when the SNP does not have the eye on the ball and all its focus is elsewhere.

As we emerge, I hope, from the Covid crisis, mental health services will be ever more crucial. Nothing that I have heard from the SNP tells me that it has a plan with which it will be able to tackle the enormity of the crisis.