Mental Health Strategy 2012-2015: easy read

Main Area for Change 4: Other Services and Groups

Mental Health among Offenders

Prison staff are being trained in delivering psychological therapies to mentally disordered prisoners.

We know that a lot of women who commit crimes have mental illness or a personality disorder. We need to improve the care and support they get in prison and in the community, and give them better access to psychological therapies. We need to help police, healthcare, prison and social work staff to understand the link between mental disorder and criminal behaviour.

We will work with prisons and the NHS to help women with borderline mental disorders in prisons and in the community. We will give better access to psychological therapies for women offenders.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Neurodevelopmental Disorders are conditions that effect a person's social behaviour.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Aspergers Syndrome, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Tourettes Syndrome and chronic severe tic disorders are among the neurodevelopmental disorders most common from childhood into adulthood.

There is small number of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who need high levels of care, and we need to raise awareness and skills so that they get the care they need.

We also need to raise awareness and understanding of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), so that people with ADHD get the best treatment.

Veterans

Veterans with mental health problems need special services to give them the care they need.

The Scottish Government funds an organisation called Combat Stress, which responds to the mental health needs of veterans and gives them better access to services.

Veteran's First Point is a drop-in service in Lothian that gives veterans treatment, support and advice on health, employment and education.

We will continue to fund the Veterans First Point project and work with the NHS and Veterans Scotland to provide more support for veterans with mental health problems.

Support Activity

The Scottish Government wants NHS Scotland to be one of the best healthcare providers in the world, delivering the highest quality care that is person centred, effective and safe. We are doing well, but there are still improvements to be made.

This is how we will support services to improve:

• Make sure staff have the skills to deliver the best treatment
• Make sure staff treat everyone with dignity and respect, supporting them to recovery
• We will improve information and data collection
• Make sure we do things in the most efficient and reliable way possible

We need to look at how we do things now and find out what needs to change. We need to make sure that the changes we make are actually making things better.

We will help to set up a local government health forum to look at ways of helping people with mental health problems get jobs, provide community support, services for older people, and make better links between health and social care.

We will review each NHS board in Scotland mental health services twice a year to make sure that services are improving, and we will provide help and support to make sure this happens.