Psychiatric patients waiting almost a year for critical follow-up care

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today said that the SNP government have ‘big questions to answer’ after research by his party showed that some psychiatric patients discharged from hospital are waiting almost a year for critical follow-up care, despite the Scottish Government's own guidance suggesting these patients should receive this care within 7 days.

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 a face-to-face, online or over the phone assessments by a mental health practitioner within 7 calendar days, with Scottish Government guidance highlighting 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:  

• 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.

Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

“It is deeply worrying that discharged mental health patients are waiting far longer than they should for follow-up care.

"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 worst cases, to suicide.

“Ministers must urgently explain why some psychiatric inpatients are facing excruciatingly long waits for follow-up care, and they must also say whether they will set clear and binding targets to put an end to these delays.

“Scottish Liberal Democrats are the party of mental health. That's why we are calling for more mental health practitioners in settings like GP surgeries, A&Es and more, all across the country."