Health plans need response

Dear Editor

Next week will see NHS Tayside consider an extremely important document on the future of mental health services which it provides around Perth and Kinross, Angus and Dundee.

For the past year it has been reviewing what it is capable of delivering in terms of adult mental health support, following a drop in the number of available medical and psychiatric specialists not just in Tayside but across the UK.

According to the update I received from NHS Tayside on this proposed service redesign, the preferred option is to close down acute adult admission sites in Perth - currently at Murray Royal, and in Angus, with a central hub for this vital provision for people often in dire need of support, in Dundee.

Reading this really hits home to me that things are clearly very desperate. In short, there will be no acute adult admission service in the whole of Tayside other than in Dundee. That is just simply ridiculous, but also very worrying for those who need that help, especially if Dundee is quite a distance away from where you live - perhaps in Highland Perthshire, or the fringes of Angus.

In England there is regular outcry over the lack of beds for child psychiatric patients - with many travelling hundreds of miles to be kept safe and get the treatment they truly need. Here in Perth and Kinross the same can and should be said about the distances people have to travel for ‘interim’ arrangements for mental health services, as well as other dailyor emergency out of hours health needs.

I’d urge people to take time to respond to any consultation from next week’s meeting. A Stewart, by email.