Last month, NHS England published a new ‘dashboard’ of statistics relating to NHS mental health, autism and learning disability services in England.
The document is the first of a new set of quarterly updates on activity, access, spending, and quality in these vital services. It provides official data, open to all, including at both national and regional levels.
Statistics by themselves do not tell very good stories. That requires people. But they do provide a snapshot of what mental health services in England are doing, and the direction they are travelling in, at this time. And in the absence of robust, mandatory standards for access, quality, outcomes or equity for most mental health services in England, they at least provide some transparency.
At the national level, the dashboard tells us that in the year up to July 2026, some 697,311 adults were using community mental health services in England (and had at least two contacts with a service during that time). The number of children accessing a mental health service (including school-based Mental Health Support Teams) over the year was even greater, at 893,219 (an increase of almost 100,000 since 2024).
The dashboard also provides figures about numbers of people accessing some specific types of support. This includes Individual Placement and Support (IPS) employment services, which last year reached some 51,661 people in England through NHS mental health services alone. There’s a way to go before it becomes available to everyone who might want it, but it is on the road towards ever greater coverage of the country.
Less encouragingly, some 1.4 million people of all ages were on a mental health, autism or learning disability waiting list by July 2026. And of even greater concern, some 75,739 children and young people were still waiting after two years for either an assessment or treatment. Long waits for mental health support place people at risk of prolonged distress, an escalation of need up to the point of crisis, and wider costs – for example to their education or work, their finances, and their relationships.
Where there are enforceable waiting time standards for mental health services, they are mostly being kept. For example for adult NHS Talking Therapies, 84% of people are seen within six weeks and 98% within 18 weeks. For early intervention in psychosis services, 72% of people are being treated within just two weeks. For children with eating disorders, 80% are seen within four weeks. This is below the target of 95%, but it has improved markedly over the last year. The problem is that other areas of mental health care do not, yet, have equivalent standards for which service providers and commissioners are held to account.
The dashboard includes a number of figures relating to safety and quality in mental health services. These provide a piecemeal picture of what is currently measured and can be aggregated nationally. But they show, for example, that there were 285 adults in ‘inappropriate out of area placements’ at the last count (in other words, they were admitted to hospital outside their local area), while 6% of people had to be readmitted to hospital within two weeks of being discharged. These are small numbers relative to the overall numbers of people using mental health services, but they are a matter for concern all the same.
The dashboard also highlights racial inequities in mental health care. It shows, for example, that children from most racialised communities are less likely to be in contact with children and young people’s mental health services than white children: the rates per 100,000 population being 6,982 for white children, compared with 3,029 for Asian children and 4,590 for Black children. Figures for use of the Mental Health Act, and especially Community Treatment Orders (CTOs), meanwhile, continue to show stark inequities for all racialised communities, albeit with very aggregated groupings in this analysis. There is nothing new in this data, but it once again speaks to the urgency of systemic change and the importance of the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework as the primary means of achieving that nationwide.
Finally, the dashboard includes data on NHS mental health services funding. It shows that, in the last financial year, integrated care boards in England spent a total of £14 billion on mental health services, with an additional £4.7 billion on autism, learning disability and dementia services. An additional £2.7 billion was spent on nationally commissioned services. These are significant sums, but they fall well short of what is needed to offer a fairer share of NHS resources for mental health.
The dashboard gives a partial picture of mental health services in England today. In so doing, it can offer a degree of transparency, if not quite accountability, for the Government, the NHS, for integrated care boards, and mental health service providers, for the ways they meet the public’s needs.
It’s also a reminder of what is missing. There are hardly any figures relating to outcomes or experiences of mental health care for the majority of people. Inequalities data is partial, and only across a few dimensions of the many that exist: it does not for example include inequities relating to age, gender or sexuality. Digital mental health support is not visible at all. There’s nothing on physical health support in mental health services. And the mental health workforce is omitted entirely. Perhaps in time, we’ll have more comprehensive data that will give a more rounded picture of mental health services as they continue to develop in the years to come.
