SNP has given up on mental health worker pledge

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today said that the SNP cannot be trusted with another term in government, as parliamentary questions confirmed that they have abandoned a pledge to deliver 1,000 extra mental health workers.

In the Scottish Government's NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026, they pledged to recruit 1,000 additional staff in primary care mental health. However, Neil Gray has now confirmed that this commitment has been paused.

Scottish Liberal Democrats recently uncovered that, collectively, young people have been left waiting more than 4.5 million days longer than they should have for mental health treatment. 

This the number of days by which the SNP government have breached their target for 90% of children and young people to receive mental health treatment within 18 weeks. 

The latest figures show that 253 children and 2,609 adults have waited over a year for mental health treatment. 

Scottish Liberal Democrats have set out their manifesto 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:

"The SNP talk a good game about mental health whenever an election is coming but they never deliver. It is now clear in black and white that they have given up on this promise.

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

“Scottish Liberal Democrats will always be the party of mental health. We know that the long waits for help are preventing people from fulfilling their potential; it’s holding them back in education and work. 

“Every vote for the Scottish Liberal Democrats is a vote to recruit and retain mental health staff, ramp up mental health training in every work place and provide new walk-in centres to meet the needs of people in crisis. 

“If that sounds good to you, then no matter where you live in Scotland, you should back us on that second, peach, regional ballot paper, and get change with fairness at its heart.”