Cole-Hamilton sets out mental health plan with visit to therapy llamas

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today used a visit to Menagerie Edinburgh and their collection of therapy llamas to set out his commitment to maintaining his party’s reputation as Scotland’s party of mental health.

The party’s manifesto will commit to deliver the world class mental health services Scotland needs, training and recruiting more mental health specialists for community settings near you.

The SNP have never met the 18-week treatment time target for adults since it was introduced in 2014. Their NHS Recovery Plan had promised to clear mental health waiting lists by March 2023. However, the latest figures from Public Health Scotland showed 253 children and 2,609 adults waiting over a year for mental health treatment, with more than 28,000 on mental health waiting lists and the eighteen-week target being missed for adults.

Scottish Liberal Democrats are today setting out their plans to:

• Recruit and retain mental health staff under a new rolling 10-year NHS workforce plan
• Provide new walk-in services to meet the needs of people in distress or crisis, working alongside and learning from SAMH’s pioneering Nook network.
• Ramp up training so that every workplace can benefit from a mental health first aider.
• Shorten the mental health waiting times targets once they are consistently being met, because 18-weeks is too long to routinely wait for treatment to begin.
• Demand UK-wide film-style age ratings for harmful social media platforms, restricting addictive algorithmic feeds designed to keep children endlessly doom-scrolling at the expense of their mental health.

Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

“If you break your arm you’d expect to have it in cast by the end of the day, but the wait for mental health treatment can be months if not years.

“John Swinney personally unleashed tens of millions of pounds of cuts on overwhelmed mental health services at the same time as the SNP were promising to clear down waiting lists. No wonder they have never once met the mental health waiting times target for adults in the 12 years it has existed.

“The Scottish Liberal Democrats believe Scotland deserves better than this. We believe in fairness for everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from. That’s why we have a realistic plan to get things done, training and recruiting more mental health specialists for community settings near you.

“This election offers the chance to build the world-class mental health services Scotland deserves and end years of SNP neglect.

“Scottish Liberal Democrats will always be the party of mental health. We know that the long waits for help are stopping people fulfilling their potential, holding them back in education and in work. It's why we would change that as part of our plan for the NHS and the economy.

“Scotland deserves world-class mental health services and with the Scottish Liberal Democrats you can vote for it because wherever you are, every vote for us on the second peach ballot paper will deliver change with fairness at its heart.”