Maureen Watt: Young people are driving change in mental health attitudes
When the priorities for the Year of Young People 2018 celebration were consulted on by the Scottish Government, the answer came back very clearly. The respondents expected us to seize this opportunity to improve the mental health services currently on offer.
There are wonderful, dedicated and skilled people delivering excellent mental health advice, support and care – but we know that there are issues around access to help and to consistency across the country and I am determined that we do better.
I am also determined that we start making these changes more quickly. Our mental health strategy sets out our vision for the next decade and early actions. We are seeing progress in a number of areas.
Online support for those experiencing eating disorders was launched by NHS Lothian in February, focusing on support for families and carers as well as young people themselves. It pairs up young people who need support with a trained buddy who understands what they are going through.
We’ve commissioned the NHS Information Service and Scottish Association for Mental Health to audit the cases where referrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are rejected.
This information has the potential to change the way that children and young people are able to access support. This audit is expected to report and publish recommendations in the coming months which will allow us to consider properly how we build on these findings and improve access to support for children and young people.
Our Youth Commission on Mental Health was launched last month and I was impressed by the passion and commitment of the young commissioners. They will look at the system for support and treatment of young people’s mental health as a whole to recommend improvements to ministers. They will do their own research and gather existing evidence. As they identify important issues, they will speak to experts, policymakers and service providers. They will also be able to draw on the resources of other work that is ongoing under the mental health strategy.
As the examples above show, collaborations with healthcare partners are already showing results. Our ongoing work with people who use the services and have experience of what needs to improve is vital if we are going to meet the goals we’ve set ourselves.
A key element to our approach to mental health – particularly in young people – is early intervention. Supporting mental wellbeing and preventing mental ill-health has great potential. Taking action at the first signs of concern can stop the development of more serious conditions and potentially avoid medical intervention.
We have several actions in our 10-year strategy to support that focus on early intervention. Action 3, for example, is to develop a ‘matrix’ of evidence-based interventions to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. We want this resource to provide information and guidance about prevention and early intervention approaches which could be used to help children and young people before more serious mental health issues arise.
A central aim of this work – being taken forward by NHS Education for Scotland – is to allow staff across sectors to make fully informed decisions about what approaches they choose as appropriate in order to meet different kinds of need.
Sometimes it can feel that young people today are maturing in an entirely different landscape to the one that politicians and the professionals working with them did, and I think that is something we need to consider carefully. It is why it is so important that we include young people in our plans to reshape mental health services and look at what different models we can bring to the new generation of young people.
That is why we are working with See Me, the national programme to tackle mental health stigma and discrimination. We want to have the biggest mental health conversation among young people in Scotland.
Young people are being surveyed to share their views on the mental health issues they face, including if they are able to talk about their feelings and if they could help someone who was struggling. While some things may have changed for young people today from those of my generation, some will have remained constant. See Me will link these Scotland-wide conversations to the wider activity and possibilities offered by YoYP 2018, because mental health has been raised as a key issue by young people themselves.
The See Me campaign will allow young people to contribute in ways that suit them, especially seldom heard young people who otherwise would be less likely to engage. This will include the creation of a digital platform which reflects the ways young people use technology and social media.
It is hugely impressive to see so many young people not only willing to share their own, sometimes really difficult experiences, but taking that experience as a motivation to help others. The pupils and volunteers I met for the campaign launch last week are an inspiration to us all and they firmly believe we are on a path to making things better for the rest of the country.
The ongoing commitment of so many incredible young people in so many strands of work will ensure that the legacy of this themed year will mean a much greater focus on protecting Scotland’s mental health.
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