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Topic: The great circle of life...  (Read 768 times)

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The great circle of life...
« on: December 05, 2016, 05:22:53 AM »
I’ll try to keep this introduction brief (but may not succeed). I’m a UK citizen who has been living in the US for 40 years, been married to my US citizen wife for 25. We have 21 year old twins. As retirement approaches I find a strong pull to move back to my native Scotland. My wife loves it there and loves my family, she has no family near us here.
We are currently living in Eugene, Oregon. It's a great place to live and raise kids, but a long way from Glasgow Green.
The complexities of such a move are a wee bit daunting. Our son is about to graduate college and will probably stay in the US for grad school and/or work, our daughter will come with us.
Obviously we’ll need a spousal visa for my wife, but the rest of us have British citizenship, so that part should be easy. Relatively.
We have enough savings and social security that the financial requirements are not an issue.
An added twist is that our daughter has had a host of mental health issues and is on multiple medications and receives on-going counseling.

I grew up just east of Glasgow, but so far we haven’t decided on a particular location; draw a line from Perth to Lanark to Ayr to Dunoon to Helensburgh to Stirling and back to Perth, that’s the zone we’re interested in. Is any particular area within those lines any better than others for mental health care?

For an ungodly number of hours in the last couple of weeks I’ve been pouring over the various topics in the forum and they’ve already been a great help.
I’ll be looking for lots of advice in the coming months, but wanted to say hello and thank you for what I’ve learned so far.

That’s as brief as I can make it.


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Re: The great circle of life...
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2016, 07:33:58 AM »
Hi GlesgaBloke, welcome to the forum.  :)

That's a lovely part of the country you're looking at.

Here are a few links that may be helpful when looking for support services for your daughter. I would get in touch directly with the SAMH to see what assistance they can provide.

https://www.samh.org.uk/

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/review-mental-health-services-scotland

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Services/Mental-Health


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Re: The great circle of life...
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2016, 10:00:19 AM »
It is a great part of the world.

One thing you will benefit from is the cost of medication. In Scotland all medication prescribed is free.


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Re: The great circle of life...
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2016, 11:11:24 AM »
You are correct to be concerned about the quality of mental health care under the NHS.  Everyone loves the NHS for general stuff, but I read horrible things about mental health provisions.  It's possible that Scotland could be one of the worst parts of the country, but I have nothing but a vague idea that most things concerning health care are generally worse in Scotland.  It's a beautiful place though!


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Re: The great circle of life...
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2016, 07:40:53 PM »
You are correct to be concerned about the quality of mental health care under the NHS.  Everyone loves the NHS for general stuff, but I read horrible things about mental health provisions.  It's possible that Scotland could be one of the worst parts of the country, but I have nothing but a vague idea that most things concerning health care are generally worse in Scotland.  It's a beautiful place though!

You really need to get out of the bubble you're in Jimbocz, Scotland's NHS regularly outperforms the NHS in England on just about every measure. Scotland has worse overall health due to higher levels of deprivation, but that's mostly due to a few very bad pockets, mostly in Glasgow, where life expectancy is very low due to poverty and related issues.

To the original question, my husband received pretty good mental health care on the NHS without too outrageous of a wait time (a couple of months maybe before the first bits of it started), and he received counselling and outpatient CBT with a psychiatrist for his anxiety and depression in Fife. We've since moved to Edinburgh, where the waiting lists are longer, but he was able to get medication from his GP no problem. You'd be able to get meds from the GP I'm sure, but you may find that going private for counselling/therapy will make for a smoother transition while you go on the waiting list for NHS services.
Arrived as student 9/2003; Renewed student visa 9/2006; Applied for HSMP approval 1/2008; HSMP approved 3/2008; Tier 1 General FLR received 4/2008; FLR(M) Unmarried partner approved (in-person) 27/8/2009; ILR granted at in-person PEO appointment 1/8/2011; Applied for citizenship at Edinburgh NCS 31/10/2011; Citizenship approval received 4/2/2012
FINALLY A CITIZEN! 29/2/2012


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Re: The great circle of life...
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2016, 10:45:42 AM »
You really need to get out of the bubble you're in Jimbocz, Scotland's NHS regularly outperforms the NHS in England on just about every measure. Scotland has worse overall health due to higher levels of deprivation, but that's mostly due to a few very bad pockets, mostly in Glasgow, where life expectancy is very low due to poverty and related issues.

To the original question, my husband received pretty good mental health care on the NHS without too outrageous of a wait time (a couple of months maybe before the first bits of it started), and he received counselling and outpatient CBT with a psychiatrist for his anxiety and depression in Fife. We've since moved to Edinburgh, where the waiting lists are longer, but he was able to get medication from his GP no problem. You'd be able to get meds from the GP I'm sure, but you may find that going private for counselling/therapy will make for a smoother transition while you go on the waiting list for NHS services.

Calm down about my by bubble, this is just a discussion, there's no reason for insults. 

Okay, I always thought that overall health is worse in Scotland, but I take your point that the Scottish NHS could be better than in the South.  Regarding mental health in general, I don't think your specific experience disproves my general assertion that mental health care under the NHS is not as good as it should be.  I never claimed to be an expert, but I read the news a lot and this is a common theme.  I think the original poster is capable of Googling it himself and making his judgment taking both our contributions in mind.

I'm glad your husband had a good outcome and hope things are going well for both of you.


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Re: The great circle of life...
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2016, 11:25:47 AM »
Oh, I totally agree that mental health care on the NHS is well below an acceptable standard. I was just giving a region-specific example of an actual experience for the OP to have some information on the question he was asking, ie whether any areas might be better or worse than others for mental health. As an aside, I would be careful about using the news as a good source of information about the NHS- the media is very biased towards focusing on the bad news, and an independent study showed that the BBC seriously distorted reporting on the NHS to parrot the government agenda about it: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/oliver-huitson/how-bbc-betrayed-nhs-exclusive-report-on-two-years-of-censorship-and-distorti

Quote
Calm down about my by bubble, this is just a discussion, there's no reason for insults. 
It wasn't intended as an insult, it's just that this isn't the first time you've made a statement about Scotland that indicates you live in the M25 bubble ;) 
Arrived as student 9/2003; Renewed student visa 9/2006; Applied for HSMP approval 1/2008; HSMP approved 3/2008; Tier 1 General FLR received 4/2008; FLR(M) Unmarried partner approved (in-person) 27/8/2009; ILR granted at in-person PEO appointment 1/8/2011; Applied for citizenship at Edinburgh NCS 31/10/2011; Citizenship approval received 4/2/2012
FINALLY A CITIZEN! 29/2/2012


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The great circle of life...
« Reply #7 on: December 06, 2016, 11:40:50 AM »
All right then, no offence taken, especially since I live squarely within the M25.

I really like Scotland, even if I've only been there a few times and base most of my knowledge on "Trainspotting".  I'm really upset that the Scottish have a forward thinking Europe loving government and we are stuck with the tories .  As far as I am concerned, the SNP should represent Twickenham. 
Anyway it seems we have reached a level of agreement, that the OP is right to be concerned about Mental Health under the NHS but Fife might be OK.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2016, 11:42:08 AM by jimbocz »


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