Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 February 2021
I have recently taken a strong interest in young people’s mental health services. In a previous debate, I spoke about what the system needs to do to adapt.
Changes to the system should be considered. I am a relative newcomer to the such debates, but I will give my observations. I spoke previously about my constituent’s poor experience in Glasgow after a suicide attempt. It took several complaints to get her to the right place. Six months on, she still does not have access to a consultant psychiatrist, which she desperately needs. Waiting times are a major feature of the system that needs to be addressed.
Another constituent who I contacted today to find out how she is doing said that she is contacted quite regularly to find out whether she still wants to see a consultant psychiatrist. She said that nothing has changed.
I whole-heartedly welcome the additional funding for mental health services, but I make the plea that the debate is not simply about funding—we need to scrutinise waiting times, the availability of the right treatment, the diversity of treatment and the pathways to the right support. We know that individuals can be permanently damaged if they fail to get the right treatment.
As SAMH has previously suggested, CAMHS should be extended to people up to the age of 25, and I have always agreed with that. We should plan for that now. For young people, the jump from leaving the children’s service at 18, when between then and the age of 24 or 25 will be the most important period of their life, is a major design feature that needs to be addressed urgently.
Waiting lists are long, and 1,000 young people are waiting on the CAMHS register. For reasons that I do not fully understand, 20 per cent of applications for treatment are rejected.
I agree with Mary Fee and others that we are in the middle of a mental health crisis. Young people in different stages of their lives are suffering in different ways. The lockdown has been tough on young people not just because they are learning from home but because their social development is being affected.
I asked my 12-year-old niece, Maia, what question I should ask the First Minister after yesterday’s statement. Maia said that she would like me to ask the First Minister why she cannot see her friends, which is probably what most children would say in the pandemic.
The crisis was brewing before we got here. That is clear from the Scottish Government’s latest wellbeing statistics, which show that 38 per cent of young people reported that they had very poor mental health before the pandemic.
One in six children are now thought to have a mental health problem. Not being in school and lacking contact with friends are damaging children and particularly the poorest children. That is why I am inclined to support a national approach to education in the lockdown. Many children are being left behind because the system is not catching up with them.
We do not know what the real impact of the pandemic will be. Some people might bounce back in time, while others will not. It is important that our mental health system is fit for purpose and able to identify the differences that exist so that, in time, people will be able to get back to their normal lives and to think in the way that they would want to think once we get back to normality, as we hope that we will do towards the end of the year.
Our mental health service must be fit for purpose, but we must ensure that, with the additional funding, we are heading in the right direction, reducing the waiting times and ensuring that the right treatment is provided at the right time. If we do that, we will have done a service to young people in this country.