Chamber and committees

The planning and provision of local healthcare services are matters for individual NHS boards. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde advise that, to improve patient flows during peak activity, there are additional beds available across all maternity hospitals that can be accessed immediately to meet demand. The health board has been clear that having urology patients in the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital has not reduced their ability to open additional beds on the obstetric floors where required.

The information is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the lives of people with learning disabilities, their families and carers through the implementation of The keys to life in Scotland. The focus of the keys to life strategy is to reduce the significant health and social inequalities faced by people who have learning disabilities. Specifically the strategy aims to reduce the significant health inequalities and early mortality of the population.

People with learning disabilities are supported by a wide range of multi disciplinary health and social care professionals in the community.

In addition to the full service of primary care offering treatments there are also further levels of specialist care such as community dentistry for those who require a more protected environment. Other specialist services include a range of clinical provisions from the community learning disability specialist teams which provide nursing, speech and language therapy, psychology, psychological therapies, psychiatry, occupational and physiotherapy services.

Other initiatives aim to address new challenges facing learning disability services such as dementia services as the learning disability population is now mainly older than previously experienced by health and social care services.

Information on psychiatric inpatients and day case discharges is recorded in Scottish morbidity record 04 (SMR04). Data on SMR04 is routinely published by financial year and 2013-14 is the latest year for which information is available.

Due to the small number of patients, an NHS board breakdown is not possible for those aged 17 or under.

Table 1: The number of patients aged 18 or over¹ discharged from psychiatric hospitals in Scotland^2,3, with a main diagnosis of learning disability^4,5, 2010-11 to 2013-14, by NHS board of treatment^6,7,8.

Table 2: The number of patients aged 17 or under¹ discharged from psychiatric hospitals in Scotland^2,3, with a main diagnosis of learning disability^4,5, 2010-11 to 2013-14, Scotland total.

* Indicates values that have been suppressed due to the potential risk of disclosure.

1. Age on discharge from facility.

2. Psychiatric inpatient and day case activity is recorded in Scottish morbidity record 04 (SMR04).

3. Data from the State Hospital (Carstairs) have been excluded.

4. In order to define learning disability the following ICD-10 codes have been used – F70-F89. The SMR04 dataset has space to record a main discharge diagnosis and up to five secondary discharge diagnoses, this analysis looks at the main diagnosis position only. For SMR04 records, diagnosis is recorded on admission and discharge. For this analysis, only diagnosis on discharge has been used.

5. Some board areas record admissions for respite care as SMR04 returns whereas others do not. This is due to differences in models of service delivery.

6. Where the data was assigned to a non-NHS provider, patients were allocated to an NHS board based on the location of the facility they were treated in.

7. Orkney and Shetland are not included in the table as there are no SMR04 hospitals in these NHS boards.

8. Patients are only counted once in each year under the first NHS board in which they were discharged.

The number of (a) talking therapies and (b) drug therapies prescribed by GPs for mental health patients is held by individual GP practices and is not provided to the Scottish Government as a matter of course.

The latest published data on the dispensing of mental health drugs by NHSScotland is available from the Information Services Division (ISD) report Medicines for Mental Health, published 30 September 2014.

The ISD report on Medicines for Mental Health is available online at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Prescribing-and-Medicines/Publications/2014-09-30/2014-09-30-PrescribingMentalHealth-Report.pdf

This report covers the period 2004-05 to 2013-14 and five main categories of medicines for the treatment of mental health problems are covered within this publication: hypnotics and anxiolytics, antipsychotics and related drugs, antidepressants, drugs used for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and drugs for dementia.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-26605 on 3 August 2015. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

See Me is Scotland’s national campaign to end mental health stigma and discrimination. The Scottish Government provides £1 million per year in addition to £0.5 million from Comic Relief to support the See Me programme. See Me workplace is part of the See Me anti stigma work to support the reduction of stigma and raise awareness in the workplace for people entering and retaining work in Scotland. See Me has recently launched a work programme which takes organisations through four specific steps from commitment and awareness through to practice transformation and becoming a See Me work partner: https://www.seemescotland.org/workplace/see-me-in-work/

Fit for Work Scotland is a service recently established on a phased basis from December 2014, funded through the Department for Work and Pensions and delivered in Scotland by the Scottish Government. The service provides support for people in work to remain at work, or return to work following periods of long term sickness absence. It provides assessment and advice for employers and employees around interventions and actions which could facilitate a return to work. This service is not specifically for mental health and wellbeing, but incorporates it:

http://www.FitforWorkScotland.scot

The Scottish Government provides funding to NHS Health Scotland to deliver Healthy Working Lives Scotland service. This is a comprehensive service offering advice and support to employers and their employees around health, safety and wellbeing. This is facilitated through advice lines and award schemes. The award schemes are from bronze to gold and the silver award specifically states the need to “Provide managers and supervisors with training to increase their knowledge and understanding of mental health, wellbeing and stress in the workplace. Ensure managers are aware of their responsibilities in relation to employee support.” (http://www.healthyworkinglives.com/)

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Services/Mental-Health/Strategy/Child-Adolescent-Services

We are working with NHS Health Education Scotland to roll out training in the Solihull Approach, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, MSc in Applied Psychology for Children and Young People and Essential Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.