Review of targets and indicators for health and social care in Scotland

Mental health indicators

Improve mental wellbeing

88. There are currently LDP waiting times standards for access to child and adolescent mental health services and for access to psychological therapies. As is the case with targets for physical health conditions, these should be subject to clinical prioritisation.

89. Further consideration of mental health indicators seems redundant in view of the recent publication of the Scottish Government's Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027. This strategy identifies 40 actions aimed at improving mental health across the life course, improving access to services, ensuring physical health in people with mental health problems, protecting their rights, and it also identifies actions aimed at developing a system of indicators for mental health services.

90. In particular, the service will:

1. Develop a quality indicator profile in mental health which will include measures across six quality dimensions – person-centred, safe, effective, efficient, equitable and timely.

2. Establish a bi-annual forum of stakeholders to help track progress on the actions in this Strategy, and to help develop new actions in future years to help meet our ambitions.

3. Carry out a full progress review in 2022, the halfway point of the Strategy, to ensure that lessons are learned from actions to that point.

91. These actions seem to satisfy the idea that indicators should be subject to regular review. The only additional point that might be made is to suggest that reporting of the incidence and prevalence of mental health problems by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation ( SIMD) might be a useful means of identifying the impact of other interventions aimed at improving social conditions on mental wellbeing.