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National Services Division (NSD) funds placements of children and young people with mental health disorders who require specialist care. The following figures are for patients with a mental health diagnosis including autism and learning disabilities who have been admitted for inpatient care. As these patients are categorised as requiring specialist care, this does not distinguish between forensic and non-forensic:

2014-15 - 4 patients

2015-16 – 3 patients

2016-17 – 2 patients

Information about placements arranged by individual NHS Boards or local authorities is not held centrally.

This information is not gathered centrally.

Awareness of child and adolescent mental health in schools has been improved by, amongst other things, our commitment to encouraging the establishment of explicit links between schools and child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) specialists as well as the development of a web-based toolkit (http://handsonscotland.co.uk) aimed at improving the confidence of teachers and others in responding to the mental health needs of children.

We take child and adolescent mental health very seriously. Our new 10-year Mental Health Strategy was published on 30 March, and sets out our vision to improve mental health in Scotland. A key section in the Strategy deals with prevention and early intervention. That section outlines our ambition that every child and young person should have appropriate access to emotional and mental well-being support in school. The very first action in the Strategy commits to a review of PSE, the role of pastoral guidance in local authority schools, and services for counselling for children and young people

National Services Division (NSD) funds placements of children and young people with mental health disorders who require specialist care. The following figures are for patients with a mental health diagnosis including autism and learning disabilities who have been admitted for inpatient care. As these patients are categorised as requiring specialist care, this does not distinguish between forensic and non-forensic:

2014-15 - 4 patients

2015-16 – 3 patients

2016-17 – 2 patients

Information about placements arranged by individual NHS Boards or local authorities is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government continues to support improved cancer access performance across NHS Scotland.

Our Cancer Strategy commits to investing an additional £2 million per annum in a new Diagnostics Fund to support swift access to diagnostics for people with suspected cancer. The funding announced in June 2017 includes a proportion of funding from the cancer strategy.

There is variation and incompleteness in the recording of diagnoses in A&E. This means that it is not possible to produce accurate national reporting of trends in attendances due to psychiatric conditions. In 2016-17, around 3.8% of those attendances with a valid diagnosis code related to a psychiatric condition.

The Scottish Government has committed to recruiting an additional 250 Community Links Workers (CLWs) in practices in deprived areas with 40 in place by September 2017. The rollout will be phased until 2021. CLWs connect people to non-medical sources of support or resources in the community which are likely to help with their health problems. To ensure CLWs are reaching those people most in need, they are equipped to deal with a wide range of issues with a large proportion of their contacts being with people who have mental health issues.

Over the next 5 years the Scottish Government is increasing additional investment to £35 million for 800 additional mental health workers. We will be working with local partners on priorities, service models and types of workers. Some of this investment could go towards more community links workers across Scotland if that is what local needs and arrangements require.

The Information and Statistics Division (ISD) annual report “Prescribing in Mental Health” provides summary information on antidepressant use in Scottish Health Boards. This report is published online, the latest report was published on 4 October 2016 and is available at: http://www.isdscotland.org/Publications/ . Included within the data tables as part of this publication is a breakdown by health board of the number of anti-depressants prescribed from 2005-06 to 2015-16.

The Scottish Government has published “Key Information on the use of Antidepressants in Scotland” which can be found online at: http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0045/00456540.pdf

On 28^th June 2017, I met the Lord Advocate, the Solicitor General and the Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs, to discuss Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership’s safer drug consumption and heroin assisted treatment proposals.

Proposals for a combined safer drug consumption and heroin assisted treatment facility are matters for authorities in Glasgow to take forward at this time. Scottish Ministers have encouraged Glasgow’s Health and Social Care Partnership to consult sensitively and robustly with relevant stakeholders and the public as they take their proposals forward.

On 16 June 2017, senior officials from Glasgow’s Health and Social Care Partnership wrote to the Lord Advocate in connection with their safer consumption proposals. A written response to this correspondence will be provided in due course.