Scotland´s mental health

Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland (TAMFS) and beyond.

On 7 May 2009, Shona Robison, Minister for Public Health and Sport, launched Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland: Policy and Action Plan 2009-11 (external link).

This policy demonstrates the Scottish Government’s continuing commitment to supporting:

• the promotion of good mental wellbeing
• reducing the prevalence of common mental health problems, suicide and self harm
• improving the quality of life of those experiencing mental health problems or mental illness

The plan builds on internationally recognised work developed under the auspices of the National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Wellbeing. This new plan explains how we will build on this existing success from now until 2011 and beyond, by focusing on strategic priorities for action as well as on the infrastructure support and coordination which will be put in place to help facilitate implementation and support delivery.

Children and young people's mental health indicators: final report

The final report for the children and young people's mental health indicators project is now available on the NHS Health Scotland website.

The final reports describes the background to the work, the process undertaken in creating the indicators, the rationale and achievements of the project.

It also includes:

- the framework of constructs (categorising conceptual elements) within which the indicators are structured
- working understandings for the constructs, an overview of the evidence-base for the constructs and indicators
- the indicators
- measures and their data sources, including the questions and scales used
- the recommendations
- overlaps with other Scottish policies and strategies for children and young people.

To download the final report, and the associated appendices, visit the NHS Health Scotland website.

The next step will be to report on the indicators to create a national mental health profile. NHS Health Scotland will produce an update of the adult mental health profile. Once this is completed work on the children and young people's mental health profile will follow, with and should be completed in late 2013.