Student mental health action plan

Enhancing access to support

Action Five: Better access to clinical support and acute services

All students should ensure that they are registered with their local GP practice. All students, whether registered or not, can also access their local out-of-hours GP service. Colleges and universities cannot provide, nor should they be expected to provide, specialist clinical support. We recognise that some students may require additional support from NHS Scotland's primary and secondary healthcare services.

These can include scheduled or unscheduled care and access to interventions delivered by the appropriate professional, in a wide range of settings including hospitals. The psychological interventions and treatments are outlined in the National Psychological Therapies and Interventions Specification.

In most instances, clinician-led services in Scotland are covered by the Scottish Government’s core mental health quality standards. The standards provide a platform to ensure consistency of care and set out what patients can expect from these services regardless of where in Scotland they are accessed. Through this Action Plan, we aim to work with partners to improve access to appropriate care pathways for students who are more likely to need these services.

There can, however, be obstacles to students accessing these services, and we recognise that students may be more likely to present in unscheduled and out-of-hours care settings and services.

To address this, we aim to strengthen the connections between institutions and healthcare providers, encourage students to register with their local GP services, be aware of how to access out-of-hours support, and establish effective escalation and de-escalation pathways to enable those who support students to direct them to the appropriate care at the right time.

The four universities in Edinburgh worked in partnership with NHS Lothian to improve student access to NHS services while Ayrshire College has worked with the three Health and Social Care Partnerships in Ayrshire to embed a Mental Health Officer at the college. This has improved student access to local NHS services and joint working with the college. These examples are further set out in Appendix One.

Action: The Scottish Government will bring together institutions, NHS Boards, Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) and other partners to facilitate better access, for students, to the support they need from primary and secondary care services.

We will also explore how data collection and analysis on student use of primary and secondary mental health services can be enhanced.

We will facilitate links with NHS Boards and HSCPs to create better partnerships, and more effective communication between institutions and Boards and HSCPs.

We will work with institutions, NHS Boards, and HSCPs to highlight existing good practice, across Scotland, in areas where effective local solutions have already been put in place.

We will work with institutions to highlight existing crisis and distress services, such as the NHS 24 Mental Health Services, so that students are aware of these supports and can make effective use of them if they need immediate support.