Background

The Scottish Government is focused on improving responses to people in distress. The Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) programme emerged through speaking and listening to people who have experienced distress, front-line service providers and literature review. The DBI programme was established in 2016 and is hosted and led by NHS Lanarkshire, via a DBI Central Team and has been tested, developed and continuously improved in the original first pilot sites of Aberdeen, Inverness, North and South Lanarkshire and Scottish Borders.

An independent evaluation of the DBI original core sites, which recommended the roll out of DBI across Scotland , routine data collection and improvement approach has supported the continuous improvement and incremental upscaling of DBI across Scotland.

The incremental growth and expansion of the DBI programme is summarised below, more detail can be found in the programme manager’s six monthly report section.

Building on the excellent progress of the initial pilot programme, DBI was extended during 2019 as part of Scottish Governments Programme for Government[1], to include;

  • The DBI Associate Programme to support the careful expansion of DBI across Scotland, enabling the DBI Central Team and DBI community to work with new partnerships who would like to work and learn with DBI to benefit from the knowledge, resources, training, tools and infrastructure.
  • The expansion of DBI to those aged 16 and over as standard down from 18 and over.
  • Led by the University of Glasgow and supported through a DBI Children & Young People Advisory Group, a scoping exercise was undertaken to review the applicability of DBI for those aged 15 years and younger and is now being tested with this group.

The First Minister announce (on 14th April 2020) a national DBI COVID 19 Response. Since the 8th June 2020, anyone who phones the NHS24 Mental Health Hub in emotional distress from anywhere in Scotland and who does not need emergency clinical intervention and is assessed as appropriate for referral to DBI, can now be referred to the DBI Programme for further support[2]. An independent evaluation, found that DBI had adapted successfully during the pandemic (add link). Building on the NHS24 experience, national pathways from both Police Scotland and Scottish Ambulance Service national contact points, are also being incrementally established.

In a clear and welcome statement of intent, the Scottish Governments ‘Protecting Scotland, Renewing Scotland, the Governments Programme for Scotland, 2020-21’[3] (published September 2020) set out that it expects local health boards and health and social care partnerships to have DBI embedded locally by March 2024, supported through a DBI transition programme, building on the associate programme described above.

[1] https://www.dbi.scot/general/scottish-government-support-to-expand-dbi-to-under-18s/

[1] Scottish Government, Programme for Government Delivery Plan:  https://www.gov.scot/publications/programme-government-delivery-plan-mental-health/pages/0/

[2] https://www.dbi.scot/general/dbi-helping-people-cope-during-covid-19/

[3] https://www.gov.scot/publications/protecting-scotland-renewing-scotland-governments-programme-scotland-2020-2021/