Chamber and committees

Scottish Power said that—

Christiana, while you were talking, I was wondering about the extent to which people are aware of the different types of support. How aware are people in general of the role of community link workers?

There is a wide range of mental health issues—it is not just one particular issue for people. The report describes the process of getting support as “slow and complicated”. What happens when people are not eligible for special services but still have mental health challenges? I throw that open to everyone.

I do not know whether anybody else wants to come in—

On the back of what Anne Rowan is saying, it is worth highlighting from the report that there is huge variability in primary care and mental health services, third sector services and peer support across Scotland. I do not know to what extent that arises from greater or lesser knowledge and awareness of the different forms of support that exist, but I would be interested to hear any comments on that and to hear about anything that could be done better. How do we join things up? Anne Rowan has highlighted the point that not everything is joined up. How do we fix that?

I want to look at some aspects of access to support. I will start with GPs, so I will put Chris Williams on the rack first. In my experience as an MSP, we get people coming in who have mental health issues, to a greater or lesser extent. Usually, we pass the information back to their GP surgery, and we get zero feedback, for confidentiality reasons. Often, the same person is back a month later, still with the same problem, and we never know what has happened.

Although we do not hear in the majority of cases, anecdotally, we hear that, as long as the person is not a danger to others, the surgery is not fussed. However, someone who has a belief that they are under surveillance by the police or MI5 or whatever may be very distressed, because they truly believe that. It seems that nothing is being done in that respect.

I am asking about the role of GPs. What support do you need to better support the mental health needs of patients? Where is the break there?

I will come back on one or two of those points. Between primary healthcare and moving into secondary care, who does the triage? How does it work? Who decides on the priority for a particular case?

So, there is not capacity because you need more money.

If you get the resources, can you find the people?

Is it the case that we will have to import some of the skills if we can, because everybody is competing for them? Then there is a question of the pricing of scarce skills. The cost could be quite substantial for the right people.