Kids’ mental health target missed by 4.2 million days since 2019

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today demanded immediate action to combat Scotland’s mental health emergency, as he revealed that the SNP Government’s mental health treatment time target for children and young people has been breached by a cumulative 4.2 million days since 2019.

In December 2014, the Scottish Government set a target for young people to begin mental health treatment within 18 weeks. The Scottish Government has never met this target.

Now, Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information requests have revealed that:

• Since April 2019, the 18-week treatment time target has been breached by a cumulative 4,233,120 days, including 421,138 days last year alone and 134,468 days in 2024/25 so far.
• NHS Borders, NHS Highland, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Orkney all showed waiting time target breaches increasing significantly from pre-pandemic levels.  
• In NHS Borders, waiting time target breaches are now more than ten times higher, rising from 1,680 days in 2019/20 to 18,200 days in 2023/24.
• NHS Lothian has recorded 1,333,052 days of treatment time breaches since April 2019.   

Mr Cole-Hamilton said:

“The SNP’s failed NHS Recovery Plan promised to clear mental health waiting lists by March 2023. Nearly two years on and these statistics show that promise wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

“For every child and young person struggling, these waits must feel like a lifetime. Nobody should ever have to endure that.

“Scottish Liberal Democrats are the party of mental health. We want to invest in driving down waiting times so that we can install more counsellors in schools and roll out more mental health professionals in GP surgeries and A&E departments near to you.  

“The SNP haven’t met the waiting targets once in the 10 years since they were introduced. It’s time to put an end to years of failure.”