Mental health and wellbeing strategy: consultation

Overview

• We want to hear your views on what a new Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Scotland should look like. We have asked a series of questions, and your answers to these will help us write the final Strategy.
• The Strategy will guide the work that the Government, and our partners, will do to improve mental health and wellbeing in Scotland. This will include an overall shared vision, a set of outcomes, and how we will achieve these to improve people's mental health and wellbeing. It will also describe how we will measure the difference we're making.
• We want to make sure that the Strategy does the right things to improve mental health and wellbeing for people in Scotland. We also want your views on whether the draft overall vision, and our draft outcomes, are the right ones.
• We want the Strategy to focus on every part of what mental health and wellbeing means. This covers a range of things, including:
  • addressing the underlying reasons behind poor mental health;
  • helping to create the conditions for people to thrive;
  • challenging the stigma around mental health, and;
  • providing specialist help and support for mental illness.
• We also want the Strategy to guide how we provide support to everyone who has a role in improving and supporting people's mental health and wellbeing.
• This ranges from the specialist mental health workforce, to those working in all health and social care settings, in our communities, schools, police custody suites, and prisons. We also recognise the invaluable support of volunteers and unpaid carers.
• The Strategy will mainly cover the next five years, until 2027. However, it will also set out a much longer term approach to improve the mental health and wellbeing of the population.
• We will also publish delivery plans to set out the work we will do over the coming years. These will show how we will make progress towards our outcomes, and how we will measure that progress.
• We have included definitions of what we mean by terms such as "mental health" and "mental wellbeing" in the document below, and have asked questions about whether these definitions are the right ones.
• We want the Strategy to be equality and human rights-based.
• The views of people who have experienced mental health issues are especially important to us.

How You Can Help Us / Our Next Steps

• In this consultation, we have asked a number of questions about the Strategy. Some of them are about what our overall shared vision should be. Some of them are about whether our draft outcomes are the right ones, and some are about how we can ensure we have the right workforce for mental health and wellbeing.
• Others are about closely related pieces of work that the Scottish Government is doing. For example, responses to the questions on the mental health and wellbeing workforce in this consultation will help us write a more detailed workforce plan that we will publish in 2023.
• Some questions will be of more interest to some people than others. For example, some questions might feel most relevant to people who have experiences of mental health issues, while some questions might be of particular interest to people who provide care and support for those with poor mental wellbeing and mental health conditions.
• Whether you answer all of the questions, or only some, your views will be carefully considered by the Scottish Government when we are writing the Strategy.
• We will publish an independent summary of all of the responses to show what people have said.
• The final Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy will be published later in 2022.
• We will also publish a report on the current Mental Health Strategy (2017-27) to show the progress that has been made, and how it has made a difference to people's lives.