Mental health and wellbeing strategy: consultation

Mental Health And Wellbeing Support

We want to hear about people's experiences of mental health and wellbeing, and any support they have received. However, we know that sometimes it can be difficult to talk or write about these experiences, whether they are your own or other people's. You can respond to any questions in the consultation that you want to. There is no need to respond to them all.

If you are affected by any of the issues covered in this document and need support, help is available. We have included links to some of those sources of support below.

Breathing Space / phone 0800 83 85 87

NHS24 / phone 111

Mind To Mind

National Trauma Training Programme

Our Overall Vision

We think that our simple, but ambitious, vision for the Strategy should be "Better mental health and wellbeing for all."

We have asked a question later in this document about whether this is the right vision that we can all share. If not, we would like to hear your views on what a shared vision should say.

Our Key Areas Of Focus

As well as agreeing a shared vision, we want to make sure that we are focusing on the right things. We will not achieve our ambitions unless we focus on new ways of doing things, and new ways of responding to different types of need.

In our Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan, we described four key areas of focus. These were:

• Promoting and supporting the conditions for good mental health and mental wellbeing at population level.
• Providing accessible signposting to help, advice and support.
• Providing a rapid and easily accessible response to those in distress.
• Ensuring safe, effective treatment and care of people living with mental illness.

We have asked a question later in this document about whether these four areas are the right ones to focus on if we are to achieve our ambitions. If not, we would like to hear your views on what else we should concentrate on.

Draft Outcomes

We have started to think about what we want the new Strategy to achieve, and how it can best respond to the challenges mentioned above.

To do this, we have been asking people to think about what 'outcomes' we would like to see for people, communities, and the population as a whole.

'Outcomes' are the positive differences or changes that policies and strategies can achieve for people. Thinking about outcomes from the start will help us to decide what we need to do, or need to do more of, to improve people's lives.

Deciding on outcomes will also help us to measure what progress we are making, and how successful we have been.

The aim of the Strategy is to achieve the same positive outcomes for everyone. But because people's experiences are different, and the opportunities they have may be different, the ways in which we can do this may be different for different people.

So, for example, we need to make sure that everyone who needs it is able to get high quality care, treatment and support for their mental health and wellbeing.

But we know that some groups of people experience poorer mental health and wellbeing because of social or economic factors that they cannot control, such as low income or poverty, poor housing, limited employment opportunities, or because they experience prejudice and discrimination.

This means we also need to look at how to influence and change these social factors to reduce the unfair differences they cause. This is important if we are to achieve positive mental health and wellbeing outcomes for everyone.

We have included a diagram of the outcomes below. However, to make them easier to read, the outcomes are also included in this consultation as a list throughout part 4. When you are reading them, it is important to think about how positive change is intended to happen over time. The diagram below (page 11) shows how some foundational changes - for example, to services and support, and to the workforce - will be needed before we see positive changes for individuals, communities, and the whole population.

In early 2022, there were 14 workshops hosted by the Scottish Government and stakeholder organisations, attended by hundreds of people from third sector and statutory organisations. The purpose of these workshops was to discuss outcomes for the Strategy. Attendees included people with lived experience of mental health conditions, and organisations that are led by, and support people with, lived experience. The draft outcomes in this document summarise the views we have heard so far.

Outcomes Framework