NHS Mental Health Dashboard

The NHS Mental Health Dashboard was created in 2016 to bring together key data from across mental health services to measure the performance of the NHS in delivering our ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

The dashboard has now been retired and the final version, for quarter 1 2025/26, was published in November 2025.

From September 2026 (quarter 1 2026/27 reporting), we will be publishing the new mental health, learning disability and autism overview dashboard (working title), which will reflect a more up-to-date set of national strategic priorities for the sector.

Interim arrangements

We have produced a signposting document which includes weblinks to published data covering the majority of the metrics previously included in the NHS Mental Health Dashboard.

We are also updating the ‘Evaluating progress in mental health service ambitions’ section below for quarters 2, 3 and 4, as well as publishing final 2025/26 financial out-turn data in quarter 4.

Mental health services funding and investment ambitions

Evaluating progress on mental health funding and investment – Quarter 1 2025-26

Since 2015/16, the NHS in England nationally has met its commitment to achieve the Mental Health Investment Standard (MHIS).

  • total planned spend on MHIS in 2025/26 is £13.671 billion
  • this exceeds 2024/25 actual MHIS spend of £12.132 billion by 12.7%, an increase of £1.539 billion

There is a new MHIS category in 2025/26 – Mental Health Support Teams in Schools (MHST) – which was previously included as part of Service Development Funding (SDF) and so did not form part of MHIS.

  • on a like-for-like basis, excluding MHST funding, the increase in planned MHIS spend in 2025/26 compared to 2024/25 would be 10.3%.

In 2024/25 integrated care boards (ICBs) spent 14.6% of their base funding allocation on mental health services.

  • in 2025/26 this percentage has reduced to 14.2%
  • the reason for the decrease in 2025/26 is a methodology change in how the ICB base funding allocation has been calculated for this purpose, with adjustments made previously to reflect certain non-recurrent allocations
  • if this percentage had been calculated on a consistent basis across the 2 years it would have increased from 13.6% in 2024/25, to 14.2% in 2025/26.

Spending across mental health services (specialised commissioning and ICB combined, including learning disability, autism and dementia) is planned to increase to £20.616 billion in 2025/26, compared to £18.988 billion in 2024/25.

  • this continues the annual increase in spend achieved each year from £12.513 billion in 2018/19

In 2025/26 total planned spend on learning disability, autism and dementia is £4.329 billion, compared to £4.290 billion in 2024/25, an increase of £0.04 billion (0.9%).

Evaluating progress in mental health service ambitions – Quarter 2 2025-26 update

The retired NHS Mental Health dashboard presented activity and implementation data for a range of NHS Long Term Plan ambitions with a summary of progress against the key ambitions set out in the table below.

Ambition Progress in Q2 (Jul-25 to Sep-25)
At least an additional 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 accessing support via NHS funded mental health services and school or college-based Mental Health Support Teams. The number of under 18s receiving at least 1 contact with NHS funded mental health services (12 month rolling metric) was 848,750, which is an additional 334,786 people since the start of the NHS Long Term Plan (against a baseline of 513,964). This is an increase on the previous quarter (848,057 in Q1 2025/26) and exceeds the ambition for 0-17year olds (for an additional 326.3k to access support).

The 18-24 years element of the ambition was delivered in 2023/24 (for an additional 18.7k to access support).
CYP eating disorder waiting times – achieve and maintain standard of 95% 72.6% of CYP with an urgent need started treatment within one week (an increase of 8.9 percentage points from 63.7% in Q1 2025/26).

80.4% of CYP started treatment for a routine case within four weeks (up 8.2 percentage points from 72.2% in Q1 2025/26).
Specialist perinatal mental health service access to reach 66,000 Access to specialist perinatal mental health services (rolling 12-month metric), including Maternal Mental Health Services, increased to 66,468 women, compared to 65,463 women in Q1 2025/26, exceeding the LTP ambition for the first time.
188,938 people to receive a course of treatment in NHS talking therapies in Q2, 2025/26 (75% of patients to be seen within six weeks) The number of patients finishing a course of treatment was 172,783 (an increase from 170,821 in Q1 2025/26).

Of those that finished a course of treatment, 89.3% started treatment within six weeks (a slight decrease from 89.8% in Q1 2025/26).
Overall access to community mental health services for adults and older adults with severe mental illness (SMI) to increase year on year Overall access to all community mental health services for adults and older adults was 686,999. This is an increase of 1.5% from Q1 2025/26 (677,017), thus the ambition continues to be met.
42,828 people with severe or complex mental health problems to access Individual Placement and Support (IPS) employment services by Q2 2025/26. 45,180 people accessed IPS services for severe mental illness (12 month rolling metric). This is an increase from 43,096 in Q4 2024/25 and above the target.
Reduce inequalities by at least 60% of people with SMI receiving an annual physical health check 58.0% of people with SMI received an annual physical health check, compared to 60.0% in Q1 2025/26.
Every area in England will offer access to comprehensive all age crisis care services via NHS 111 ‘select mental health’ option by 2023/24 The NHS has achieved all its crisis care commitments in respect of providing individuals with access to: 24/7 age-appropriate crisis care via NHS 111 ‘select mental health’ option; comprehensive crisis resolution home treatment services for adults; a range of alternative crisis services; full roll-out of Mental Health Response Vehicles (MHRVs); and has continued to expand crisis care provision for children and young people.