MENTAL HEALTH FEATURE
Adding value to community wellbeing
Inga Davidson and Kathrin Crawshaw-Zein report on the development of the new West Lothian community wellbeing hubs
© GettyImages / ThitareeSarmkasat
The Scottish Mental Health Delivery Plan ( Scottish Government 2018 ) set out a 21st Century approach to adult mental health . It calls for more emphasis on early intervention and the right treatment at the right time .
Point 23 of the strategy sets out to test and evaluate the most effective and sustainable model of supporting mental health in primary care . A key theme of this strategy is improving access to treatment and joined up accessible services .
The strategy outlines a commitment to primary care transformation , to develop new multidisciplinary team models and support primary care to deliver on ‘ ask once , get help fast ’.
These themes are mirrored by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists ( RCOT 2016 ), in its overarching recommendations to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for people , by intervening early within primary care .
West Lothian is a council area to the west of Edinburgh , with a population of just over 180,000 . Locally , it was felt that West Lothian has a large proportion of people with moderate mental health conditions and these were managed under a medical model by GPs in primary care .
Considering well-known pressures in primary care , it was recognised that people with moderate mental health needs required an alternative model of care . As a result , the West Lothian Community Wellbeing Hubs opened in June 2019 .
These are primary care based , non-medical mental health teams that are multidisciplinary and multi-agency , and which utilise a strong focus on early intervention and social prescribing .
Community wellbeing hubs The purpose of the mental health wellbeing hubs is to provide time limited interventions , for six to eight weeks , for patients aged 18 to 64 with mild to moderate mental health conditions .
The health and social care partnership commissioned Lanarkshire Association Mental Health ( LAMH ), a local third sector organisation to deliver the community link worker aspect of the service , working in partnership with an NHS clinical team consisting of occupational therapists , community psychiatric nurses , a clinical psychologist and clinical associates in applied psychology .
There are two hubs that cover the West Lothian locality , offering an identical service in each geographical location .
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