Adult secondary mental health services - quality standards: consultation - easy read

Introduction

The Scottish Government wants to hear your views on their new standards for adult secondary mental health services. We have asked a series of questions, and your answers to these will help us write the final standards.

What are Adult Secondary Mental Health Services?

Secondary mental health care services are usually services which need a referral from your GP or another healthcare service.

Secondary mental health services are usually made up of community mental health teams (CMHTs) and adult in-patient mental health wards.

Secondary care services may be given in the community or in hospital by a team of mental health professionals. These include Psychiatrists, Mental Health Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers and Mental Health Officers.

There are no national standards for adult secondary mental health services in Scotland. People who know about mental health services have told us this stops some people from getting the care they need.

The reason we want to set standards for adult secondary services are:

To let people, families and carers know what they can expect from a secondary mental health service.

To make adult mental health secondary services better for people who use them.

What we have done

While writing the standards we talked with people who use mental health services, mental health staff and organisations who give mental health services.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Support

We want to hear about people’s experiences of mental health and wellbeing, and any support they have had. We know that sometimes it can be difficult to talk or write about these experiences.

You can answer any questions in the consultation that you want to. You do not need to answer them all.

If you are affected by any of the issues covered in this document and need support, help is available.

Here are links to some organisations that can give you support:

• Breathing Space / phone 0800 83 85 87
• NHS24 / phone 111
• Mind To Mind
• National Trauma Training Program

Standards for Adult Secondary Mental Health Service

In this part of the document you can find the standards we have drafted for secondary mental health services and questions about each section.

Not everyone has the same experience when they use mental health services. We want these standards to help make sure that services meet your needs whoever you are and whatever your background is.