Longest wait for psychology help
Mental health patients awaiting specialist psychological therapy have to wait longer in Forth Valley than anywhere else in Scotland.
Figures released by IDS Scotland show that between October and December last year NHS Forth Valley provided just 43.5 per cent of patients with such treatment within the 18-week target. Of the 596 people who received this therapy 259 were seen within the target time.
The per centage is the lowest of all 14 NHS boards in the country – and around 50 per cent worse than NHS Highland whose figure was 98.2 per cent.
Dean Lockhart, Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, has described the statistics as “utterly unacceptable”. He said: “The SNP government continuously says that mental health is a priority, but NHS Forth Valley’s statistics fall well short of the expected performance. This is, admittedly, a difficult situation to address, especially as the awareness of psychological problems increase. But for NHS Forth Valley to moreoften-than-not miss the target, for both children and adults, is utterly unacceptable.
“I met the minister for health in October, who assured me that these results will improve. These statistics simply need to improve, otherwise nobody will believe the SNP when it says it wants to give parity of esteem to mental health.
“People across the area are being completely failed by a system which is supposed to help them.”
However, the NHS say that the waiting times for such specialist services has improved of late and priority is given to urgent referrals and patients with the longest waits.
A spokesperson said: “Patients in Forth Valley have access to a wide range of mental health services and support. These include crisis services for people who require urgent care, community teams which support people in their own homes and specialist inpatient care for people who require to be admitted to hospital. The majority of our mental health services can be accessed very quickly, however, there is a waiting list for access to specialist psychological therapies and work is underway to address this. Waiting times for these specialist services have improved in the last few months and priority is being given to urgent referrals and patients with the longest waits.
“We have experienced recruitment challenges in this service however a number of additional staff have been employed in the last few months and further posts are in the process of being filled to help increase capacity over the next year.”
Despite the waitingtime figures for specialist psychological therapies being the worst in Scotland, figures revealed that the number of children and young people seen by mental health services in general within the target time has increased dramatically. In NHS Forth Valley there has been a 43.7 per cent improvement, with 94.8 per cent of young people being seen within 18 weeks compared with 51.1 per cent in the last quarter.
The improvement team, led by NHS Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS), has been working with mental health teams to redesign and improve access to services.
Maureen Watt MSP, Scottish Government minister for mental health, said: “This continued reduction in waiting times is encouraging because it demonstrates that access to services is improving.
“I’m particularly pleased to see that the improvement team, led by Healthcare Improvement Scotland, seems to have made such a positive impact in Forth Valley.
“In the coming weeks I will be publishing our new strategy for mental health. This will lay out how we will change services over the next decade, backed with £150 million of funding.”
NHS Forth Valley Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) department manager, Jacqueline Sproule, said: “The excellent results are the culmination of hard work and a recovery plan that made many small improvements in the way we work. Putting these together has paid off along with the recruitment of extra specialist staff in all areas.”