Mental Health and Wellbeing Delivery Plan
The Mental Health and Wellbeing Delivery Plan sets out our priorities and actions to help us achieve our vision of a Scotland, free from stigma and inequality, where everyone fulfils their right to achieve the best mental health and wellbeing possible.
Budgets
Preventative Budgeting
There are many pressures facing our mental health and wellbeing supports and services that could affect our ability to deliver the vision set out in this plan including significant financial and staffing pressures on the system.
One of the ways we want to ease pressures on our services is by collectively considering how they are organised and where money is directed – so that more people receive help earlier in local communities, preventing delays that can result in increasingly complex and hard to treat problems.
Preventative budgeting will be a key part of making this change. This means the Scottish Government working with a range of public sector partners to focus on preventative spending – tracking where in the system money is spent and demonstrating the value of investing in early intervention and prevention approaches. This will help decision makers change the way services are budgeted for and funded so that more money is spent on community services and, as demand for them reduces, less on acute services like hospitals, where appropriate.
Not only can this prevent mental health conditions arising in the first instance, but this should also mean that people who need help can get it earlier, faster and closer to home and prevent mental health conditions escalating. Whilst this will require initial investment, a more prevention-focused system can reduce the overall budget required for those with severe and enduring need whilst ensuring sufficient resource is still available to meet this level of need if required.
The Scottish Government’s Prevention Unit is delivering on commitments from the Public Service Reform Strategy and Scottish Spending Review 2026 to develop a system for tracking preventative spend, starting with the Budget 2027-28.
This preventative budgeting system is only the first step in an ongoing journey of tracking and baselining preventative spend in Scotland to support decisions to move spending further upstream into prevention. This system will be further evolved to assess the impact of Scottish Government Budget preventative spend on outcomes.
Mental Health Budgets
Most of the money spent on mental health and wellbeing services is delivered through NHS Board budgets and NHS Scotland spends around £1.6 billion on mental health each year based on latest data.
Recently, money from Scottish Government to NHS Boards was ‘baselined’ which means it goes out every year as part of the overall allocation of money from the government to the NHS. In 2025-26, this was £127 million in NHS Board allocations for mental health. Giving money to the NHS in this way provides greater certainty over local funding and helps deliver better, more sustainable results and outcomes that meet the needs of local people. The Scottish Government has also ‘baselined’ several mental health funding streams for local authorities – for example, the £15 million per annum to support community-based support for children and young people and £16 million per annum to support school counselling - to help support greater stability and sustainability of services.
Additionally, nearly £150 million in 2026-27 supports other mental health services, community based support, early intervention and prevention and increased support for people with neurodevelopmental needs and implementation of the Service Renewal Framework across the full spectrum of adult, children and young people and infant mental health services.
Significant financial pressures are currently being experienced system wide and we recognise that, as we seek to meet need, we are doing so both in the context of budgetary deficits, requiring efficiencies across sectors and wider reform, where we need to make the best use of funding. Where possible, we have set out within each action the specific budget that is available to deliver it within this financial year (2026-27). Where not indicated, the action will initially be taken forward within current resource. However, it is recognised that delivery within existing local government and partner budgets will be challenging without adequate funding being available. Budgets to support delivery of the actions set out in this plan will be subject to the annual Scottish Budget and Parliamentary process.
Recognising the pressures on the third sector, the Scottish Government is also seeking to maximise the benefits of the Scottish Government’s Fairer Funding initiative – which has enabled multi-year investment in the likes of our Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults.
Across our actions we are committed to ensuring a whole system approach and appropriate resourcing as we move forward and will consider, on an ongoing basis, what resources are required at each stage of delivery.