thought it was accurate. “People with mental health problems need to be able to rely on the benefits system’s ability to understand and assess the difficulties they face. We support attempts to help people with mental health problems get back to work – but the assessment process must be improved,” explains SAMH chief executive Billy Watson. Te consultation period for the strategy has
provided a good opportunity to highlight and debate such issues, says Roberts, adding that she doesn’t believe SAMH will be alone in thinking that employability could make a big contribution. “One of the things we said when the strategy came out was we liked that it was quite open. It didn’t seem like it had been pre-written and we were being asked to rubber stamp it. Tere is room for flexibility. “So yes, we would have liked to see it in from the start, but the point is that it makes it in there now. Te point of having a consultation is to highlight these kind of things.” Indeed, as mental health affects all areas of
life, Vestri says she would also like to see all future policies proofed for their mental health impacts. “It impacts on people’s physical health, business and employment; the way people are able to live their lives at home, social exclusion and so on. So in a way my ideal would be to
see a focus on mental health impacts in all of the other planning that all the different parts of government do.” Sim, too would like to see the final strategy take a more forward-thinking approach to emerging issues such as negative websites, and suggests the government could commission work on expanding the availability of support for vulnerable people online.
“It is equally important when you talk about recovery to talk about employment, to talk about social inclusion and we felt it shied away from those discussions a bit”
“We need to have a better understanding of what can work and what approaches we could take to alleviate the negative impact of certain online environments,” he says. While the Samaritans has been working with journalists in the print media about a code of conduct, Sim would like to see more
work with major organisations, such as social networking sites, search engine providers and online news media outlets, to develop responsible practices. Such issues are relevant now, and will be even more so by the time the strategy lapses in 2015, he argues, adding: “So we can’t ignore it in the context of working in mental health in 2012.” Bradstreet, too, says he would like the final strategy to have more of a vision of what Scotland is trying to achieve in mental health. He believes a longer-term vision would help get people to buy into the eventual policies and strategies that come out of it and drive it forward. “It needs something that says this is ultimately what we
want to achieve for everybody in Scotland when it comes to mental health, because mental health is obviously something that affects all five million people one way or the other. “So it is really important, I think, to have a strong vision in the eventual strategy.”
30 January 2012
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