About this toolkit

This toolkit supports people who work within or design mental health and substance use services. You can access it as a digital resource on the web or through the mobile app.

The toolkit targets professionals and offers tools to help them make decisions about the care or services they deliver. It includes two resources: the national mental health and substance use protocol and the ASISST-Lite for mental health settings. Although you can find these resources in other formats, bringing them together in this toolkit aims to make them more accessible and aid decision making.

We encourage you to use the contact information below to share your thoughts and suggestions for improving the toolkit.

The Mental Health and Substance Use Programme Team:

his.transformationalchangementalhealth@nhs.scot

The content of this toolkit has been for accessibility in line with RDS standard operating procedures.

The content within the toolkit has been signed off by the authors, The Mental Health and Substance Use Protocol Programme Team.

The authors mentioned will provide the function of ongoing development and sign off any updates.

Content within this toolkit will be reviewed regularly by The Mental Health and Substance Use Protocol Programme Team.

• Copyright permission to use the Assist Lite tool within this toolkit was granted to Healthcare Improvement Scotland by the NHS England Copyright Licensing Service.
• All icons are sourced from Flaticon.com, accessed through the licence held by Tactuum Ltd as software provider of the RDS platform.

Knowledge and Information Skills Specialist has undertaken an evidence review, the Mental Health and Substance Use Protocol Programme Team also completed a strategic gap analysis and worked with reference groups to define the protocol and have been working with local areas to further refine and iterate the protocol.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback, you can use the feedback form on the Right Decision Service website or contact the Mental Health and Substance Use Protocol Programme team at his.transformationalchangementalhealth@nhs.scot

The content has been risk assessed:

• The toolkit does not reference medicines
• No risks to the safety of patients or service users have been identified.

The toolkit was tested by professionals working in mental health and substance use services within different health and social care partnerships between September 2024 and November 2025. All feedback on the content was taken into account and changes made accordingly.

All content was reviewed by prior to publication by The Mental Health and Substance Use Protocol Programme Team, the Portfolio Lead and Associate Director for the Community Engagement and Transformational Change Directorate in Healthcare Improvement Scotland.