Year-long mental health help wait

NEARLY 500 children or young people waited longer than a year to see a mental health specialist, new figures reveal. NHS figures, released to Labour, show 460 young people waited for more than 52 weeks for help between January 2015 and March this year.

Nearly 5000 young people also waited longer than the 18-week target for accessing mental health services.

Kezia Dugdale said: “These are kids in crisis at a really impressionable stage of their life.

“You wouldn’t dream of letting cancer waiting times sit at this level so if we’re going to have a step-change in our attitudes to mental health then we need to talk about it in the same terms.”

The Scottish Government has pledged more funding for mental health and is working on a new long-term strategy for the issue.