Readers' Letters: We need to look at Scotland's mental health crisis

Worrying research says there are now 168,000 Scots of working age on sickness benefit due to mental illnesses (Picture: Adobe)

According to the charity Change Mental Health, the cost to the Scottish economy of our poor mental health is estimated at around £8.8 billion.

This reflects, in part, the post-Covid surge is in mental-health benefit claimants under the Adult Disability Payment (ADP) system introduced by the Scottish Government in 2022, with its less intrusive (i.e. non-face-to-face) eligibility checks. There are now 168,000 Scots of working age on sickness benefit due to mental illnesses – often anxiety-related. That’s the size of the population of Dundee!

In the work context, last week was “International Stress Awareness Week”. To coincide with this, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors (CIPD) published their annual survey of health and wellbeing at work. This highlights a significant rise in average absence at work due to mental health issues: absence increased to 9.4 days per employee per year, up from 7.8 days in 2023, and 5.8 days in 2022.

The CIPD survey also found one in four Scots employees see work as negatively affecting their mental health due, inter alia, to high workloads, long commutes and caring responsibilities etc. Good life-work balances are proving especially difficult, if not impossible, for carers and the lower paid to achieve. Estimates indicate the related opportunity cost to the Scottish economy may well be over £1 billion.

It’s a sensitive policy area frequently overshadowed by other crises of the moment. But the economic cost is high and rising rapidly. The psychological and emotional costs to individuals and communities are even higher. Longer-term implications for public policy are also poorly understood. Accordingly, more comprehensive and authoritative research is needed to better establish the causes, consequences and cures for Scotland’s poor mental health profile, both in and outside of work.

Holyrood, are you on this?

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Tax the rich OAPs

Wealthy pensioners should – and I'm sure would – gladly pay thousands more in tax. But only if it's matched by cuts in benefits and the total savings and extra revenue used to create an old age care insurance fund and vastly increase defence spending. I would – I'm not wealthy but could afford a few thousand extra tax a year to avoid huge care home costs

But Chancellor Rachel Reeves knows where the votes come from – inside her party and the electorate – and until the UK economy collapses, or war with Russia starts, or both, and a brutal reset is forced on us, the UK's decline will continue. And you'll still be able to apply and get PIP benefits over the phone

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Big squeeze

It is not the helpless population Rachel Reeves should be squeezing in her Budget, it is the rascal bankers who are now charging over one hundred thousand million pounds every year as interest on the national debt, that mainly consists of money they created from thin air.

Can she not see that they are her problem, and encourage people who are having a hard time making ends meet by reducing their fiscal burden. No government ever taxed its electorate into a state of grateful prosperity.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Kinross-shire

Immigrants truth

What an important and timely article by Joyce McMillan about the current furore over immigration. It's crucial to speak truth to the lies of those who seek to demonise all immigrants (Perspective, 6 November). We need immigrants here in Scotland and the vast majority are hard working and model citizens, not spongers and deviants.

Brian Bannatyne-Scott, Edinburgh

Details, please

Stan Grodynski treats us to his usual “an independent Scotland can do much better for the majority of its people” (Letters, 10 November). And also, as usual, he cannot tell us how it would do that. None of the separatists can, including John Swinney. They constantly issue boasts and idle predictions but cannot tell us what they would actually do to make Scotland “better”. One might ask why the SNP has failed over almost 20 years in power to make Scotland “better”. Its dire record is an awful warning about what a separate Scotland would be probably be.

I do hope Mr Grodynski has read the article about Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli’s critique of that record (“High taxes ‘put people off Scotland’,” 10 November). In particular, he should note the closing sentence from Sir Anton: “Under the SNP, economic growth has been ignored and the unique potential of communities across Scotland has been held back by an Edinburgh-centric view of the economy.”

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Spurious spoutings

Stan Grodynski says that there are 100 billionaires in UK and, by inference, that this is a cause of the poverty and deprivation that currently besets the country. Nationalists spend much time persuading the Scottish people that they would model an independent Scotland’s economy on the Scandinavian countries. Sweden, a country a sixth the size of the UK and with only twice the population of Scotland, currently has 45 billionaires and more billionaires per head of the population than the USA. It doesn’t seem to be suffering the same plight Mr Grodynski describes.

He goes on to paint the City of London as being inhabited by “profiteering, soul-bereft financial moguls”. Has it ever occurred to him that those soul-bereft moguls pay tax? Without them an independent Scotland would be even poorer than he describes.

But then, he has never let facts get in the way of a spurious argument.

Mark Tennant, Elgin, Moray

Clown act

The BBC has been found wanting over the shocking Donald Trump Panorama tape and so much more. The boss, Tim Davie, had no choice but to resign given the importance of what has transpired. Interestingly the only political leader to rush to the defence of the BBC, so far, has been the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey. The Liberals achieved their best result at last year’s election due in no small part to Mr Davey's eye catching silly stunts. No matter whether you are for or against Donald Trump what the BBC did was utterly unforgiveable and even dangerous. Mr Davey has let his anti-Trump bias override his common sense. Is it a case of once a clown, always a clown?

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Save the Wales

It has been reported that SNP ministers are to hold meetings with the leaders of Plaid Cymru in Wales to prepare them for government after next May's elections.

I sincerely hope that the good people of Wales are prepared for the disasters that lie ahead.

Jim Houston, Edinburgh

Climate of denial

Donald Trump's considered opinion – for him anyway – is that climate change is a “green scam, thought up by stupid people”. Tragically, this has led America to boycott Cop30, and even hinder its progress.

Far from taking steps to reduce its carbon footprint, Trump is actively encouraging, in his own inaugural words, “drill, baby, drill”. Already one of the world's biggest polluters, the US is taking the retrograde step of mining for coal and fracking for shale.

Shamefully, Keir Starmer is refusing to back financially the Tropical Forest Forever Facility initiative for the restoration of the Amazon Basin. He says we can't afford to. Surely we can't afford not to.

Brazil's President, Luiz da Silva, astonishingly asserts his country's rights to open up oil fields in the Amazon Delta, on the grounds other countries, including Norway and UK, Russia and the Middle East, have benefited hugely from oil.

A huge plus for Cop30 is China's plans to drastically reduce its use of fossil fuels. Let's hope their promises are translated from grand words to decisive acts. The future of the world depends on it.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Focused comments

In The Scotsman article of 10 November on the Industrial Advisory Strategy Council it says the UK Government decided against zonal energy pricing because “it said it would deter investment north of the Border”. Actually, the UK Government seemed more concerned with the effect of zonal pricing south of the Border. In the House of Commons on 10 July 2025, UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said if zonal pricing were introduced firms in the “Midlands, Wales and the south of England would therefore face damage to their competitiveness”.

E Campbell, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

No respect

To those moronic Hibernian fans who booed the minute's silence for Remembrance Day before their match with St Mirren; John Aitkin, Jack Borthwick, James Buchan, Sandy Grosert, James Hendren, Matt Paterson, Robert Reid, David Stevenson, James Williamson, Robert Wilson and Bobby Atherton must wonder why the hell they ever bothered, in some cases laying down their lives for rubbish like you.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Brolly good

I was cheered to learn from The Scotsman of 8 November that it was a police spokesman who issued a report on a damaged umbrella.

S Beck, Edinburgh

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