Veterans deserve mental health support
Last October NHS Lothian announced it was axing its funding for the Veterans First Point service, which by its own figures had provided mental health support for 2500 military veterans over the past 15 years.
These are people who, lest anyone forgets, have sacrificed their mental health in the service of our country so we can sleep safely at night, and in any civilised society the need to care for them would be unquestioned, and what those in uniform deserve.
But to save just over £200,000 a year, NHS Lothian was prepared to break this covenant, and along with the fellow Lothian MSP, the SNP’s Fiona Hyslop, at a meeting last week we were able to challenge officials on their decision. The officials noticeably winced when Fiona Hyslop told them that veterans minister Graeme Dey was particularly angered because the decision had not been reversed despite increased funding for mental health. And their answers were strangely and unacceptably woolly.
With reason, senior medics argue about their overall funding, and there is an ongoing campaign by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland to hold the SNP to its promise to spend 10 per cent of health budgets on mental health, which at the last calculation was over £220 million short.
But the £200,000 saved from Veterans First Point will make little difference to a shortfall of that scale, and when the illness has been suffered in the service of our defence, one way or another the commitment to come to their aid should be absolute.
Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Lothian