Introduction
The government of Scotland recognises the need to develop a comprehensive system to address mental health issues throughout the region. Contemporary medicine and technology allow for the prevention and treatment of almost all mental conditions. To achieve this task on a national scale, however, there should be a common framework for handling prevalent issues. To address these concerns, the government of Scotland developed a 10-year mental health strategy. This paper will provide an overview and critique of the plan. In short, the strategy published by the Scottish government is comprehensive, but there are questions about its feasibility.
Summary
The Scottish Government’s Mental Health strategy spans from 2017 to 2027. The document prioritises early intervention and prevention, and thus, emphasises the importance of schools in early diagnosis and counselling. For those individuals who professionally support young people, the government is to develop training programmes to elevate their skills and expertise. The second element of the strategy is the development of convenient mental support services and improving the accessibility of treatment options. This part includes increasing the number of mental health workers, improving the quality of self-help materials, and providing funding for vulnerable segments of the population. Three other critical sections of the document are the treatment of physical issues that resulted from mental conditions, advancing relevant legislation, and developing a data framework for future use.
Critique
The strategy can be considered to be comprehensive because it handles all aspects of treating and preventing mental health issues. The document can be visualised as a pipeline – mental conditions are attempted to be dealt with at early stages. As individuals move through the pipeline, they receive treatment and materials for self-help. The last point in the pipeline is the systematic collection of data. Information about individuals with mental health conditions and their experience from childhood to adulthood can contribute to the understanding of psychological problems. Having a database with multidimensional data is a significant advantage in terms of investigation opportunities and the feasibility of research projects.
Despite the relatively short length of the plan, it encompasses multiple planes of the same issue. For the prevention of mental health conditions, the authors propose to focus on factors contributing to poor mental health. For instance, poverty is considered to be the most significant contributor to adverse mental well-being. Therefore, the Scottish government is to focus on all aspects, including facilitating the elimination of poverty throughout the region, improving social security, increasing the quality of public education, and ensuring that all people are provided with employment opportunities. Only concentrating on treatment options is not enough to solve mental health issues on a national scale. Therefore, the ambitions of the Scottish government presented as part of the strategy are favourable. However, the paper does not provide detailed information about how these ventures will be funded. This raises questions about the strategy’s financial and technical feasibility.
Conclusion
The number of individuals with mental health conditions has been rising globally and the same problem is affecting Scotland. Realising this fact, the Scottish government presented a comprehensive plan of how it is going to tackle mental health issues on a large scale between 2017 and 2027. Although the programme is extensive and is full of details, the government does not provide information about the feasibility of this long-term project.