Of the men and women completing a survey of mental health issues in rural Scotland 67 per cent reported suffering depression, 22 per cent admitted to suicidal thoughts and feelings, while of the 12 per cent describing self-harming behaviour the majority were under 24 years old.
These were some of the preliminary findings described to this week's meetings of the National Rural Mental Health Forum, and the Scottish Parliament's Cross Party Group on Rural Policy, by Professor Sarah Skerratt from the Rural Policy Centre of Scotland's Rural College (SRUC). Her full report, prepared in conjunction with the national mental health charity, Support in Mind Scotland (SiMS) will be published this Easter.
In June last year, SRUC and SiMS brought together rural and mental health organisations and service users, in Dumfries and Inverness, to help prepare an online national survey of people experiencing mental ill health issues across rural Scotland, run in the summer of 2016. It was the first time such a survey had been run.
[For more of this story, written by Rog Wood, go to http://www.heraldscotland.com/...amp;utm_medium=email]
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