Stressed and depressed - mental health problems cost £10bn a year

SCOTLAND'S poor mental health is now costing the country more than £10 billion a year, a charity has revealed.

Problems such as stress, depression and various disorders are keeping people out of work, putting pressure on the NHS, and also hitting police, housing and other services.

The Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) has launched a pre-election manifesto urging parties to take a broader approach to the problem.

The charity, which helps 3,000 Scots every week, is also nearing completion of a study looking at the cost of mental health to the country.

The final figures will be published in a few months, but is expected to be a sharp increase on the 8.6bn estimated cost of five years ago.

Billy Watson, chief executive of SAMH, said: "The figure will be between 10bn and 12bn, and mental health will only be about a fifth of that.

"A lot of it is in sickness, absence and worklessness. The average workforce is carrying an 8 per cent sickness rate at any one time, and the biggest causes of that are stress, anxiety and depression."

Other costs of poor mental health to Scotland are in housing and homelessness services, the justice system, police and prisons, benefits and loss of taxes.

SMAH wants political parties to create policies to address all these areas. For example, it wants those working in housing services to realise that placing a sufferer in a home that aggravates their mental health - because they do not have access to a garden, for example - will cause further problems and have knock-on costs for society.

Mr Watson said: "We want to get a broader understanding of mental health.

"Teachers are a perfect example. They will engage with young people who go on to have mental health problems. We want them to have an understanding of what resilience looks like and how to build it."

SAMH is working with Learning Teaching Scotland in the hope of building more mental health awareness into teacher training.

The charity's has been backed by journalist Magnus Linklater.

He said: "My son Archie, who is now 40, has been in and out of mental health care since he was 16 because of manic depression.

"I've seen the system at first hand for a long period of time.

"The NHS is often not well equipped to intervene in a person's mental health condition until that condition becomes critical.

"We have found that great benefits come from resources that lie outside the NHS, such as the voluntary sector, informal support networks and early intervention programmes."

Mr Linklater went on: "This is why, particularly in the context of cuts, it is vital that the Scottish Government extend investment in mental health beyond the NHS."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "We value greatly the contribution SAMH makes to delivering improved mental health services across Scotland and have worked very closely with them on shaping and advancing the mental health policy agenda.

"Mental health is a priority for the Scottish Government, and we are delivering an ambitious agenda which works right across the full spectrum of mental health services, from increasing access to child and adolescent mental health services, to expanding the range and quality of psychological therapies and delivering Scotland's first national dementia strategy.

"We plan to publish a successor to the Delivering for Mental Health strategy as soon as is practical, which will build on work already done to ensure our approach for the immediate future continues to focus on key challenges and priorities."