NHS Mental Health Dashboard

The NHS Mental Health Dashboard brings 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 provides transparency in assessing how NHS mental health services are performing, alongside technical details explaining how mental health services are funded and delivered.

The most recent version of the dashboard includes the latest data available up to and including quarter 1 of the 2025/26 financial year.

This is the final publication of the quarterly NHS Mental Health Dashboard.

From quarter 1 2026/27 reporting, we will be publishing the new MHLDA Overview Dashboard (working title), which will reflect a more up-to-date set of priorities for both the mental health, learning disability and autism programmes.

In the interim, published mental health performance data will be available via weblinks signposted from this landing page in quarters 2, 3 and 4 in 2025/26.

We will also update the ‘Evaluating progress in mental health service ambitions’ section below in quarters 2 to 4, and publish final 2025/26 financial out-turn data in Q4.

We are currently seeking stakeholder feedback to help us develop the new dashboard – please complete this online survey to share your views by 23:59 on Sunday 14 December 2025.

Mental health services funding and investment ambitions

Evaluating progress on mental health funding and investment

  • 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 £13.671bn.
    • This exceeds 2024/25 actual MHIS spend of £12.132bn by 12.7%, an increase of £1.539bn.
  • 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 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 £20.616bn in 2025/26, compared to £18.988bn in 2024/25.
    • This continues the annual increase in spend achieved each year from £12.513bn in 2018/19.
  • In 2025/26 total planned spend on learning disability, autism and dementia is £4.329bn, compared to £4.290bn in 2024/25, an increase of £0.04bn (0.9%).

Mental health service ambitions

The investment and ambitions in the NHS Long Term Plan were intended to expand access and deliver timely, high quality mental health support. Further detail on the full set of ambitions is set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

Evaluating progress in mental health service ambitions

The NHS Mental Health dashboard presents 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 Quarter 1 (Apr-25 to Jun-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 848,057, which is an additional 334,093 people since the start of the NHS Long Term Plan (against a baseline of 513,964). This is an increase on the previous quarter (829,308 in Q4 2024/25) and exceeds the ambition.

The 18-24 element of the ambition (for an additional 18.7k to access support) was delivered in 2023/24.
CYP eating disorder waiting times – achieve and maintain standard of 95% 63.7% of CYP with an urgent need started treatment within one week (a decrease of 9.4 percentage points from 73.1% in Q4 2024/25).

72.2% of CYP started treatment for a routine case within four weeks (down 1.7 percentage points from 73.9% in Q4 2024/25).
Specialist perinatal mental health service access to reach 66,000 In 2014, fewer than 15% of localities provided specialist PMH services for women with complex or severe conditions at the full level recommended in NICE guidance, and more than 40% provided no service at all. Since April 2019, there has been a specialist community perinatal mental health service in every ICS area of England.
Access to specialist perinatal mental health services (rolling 12-month metric), including Maternal Mental Health Services, increased to 65,463 women, compared to 63,784 women in Q4 2024/25.
187,021 people to receive a course of treatment in NHS talking therapies in Q1, 2025/26 (75% of patients to be seen within six weeks) The number of patients finishing a course of treatment was 170,821 (an increase from 163,159 in Q4 2024/25).
Of those that finished a course of treatment, 89.8% started treatment within six weeks (a decrease from 90.7% in Q4 2024/25).
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 677,017. This is an increase of 1.9% from Q4 2024/25 (664,412).

 
40,478 people with severe or complex mental health problems to access Individual Placement and Support (IPS) employment services by Q1 2025/26. 44,167 people accessed IPS services for severe mental illness (12 month rolling metric). This is an increase from 43,096 in Q4 2024/25.
Reduce inequalities by at least 60% of people with SMI receiving an annual physical health check 60.0% of people with SMI received an annual physical health check, compared to 66.5% in Q4 2024/25.
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, 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; continuous provision for children and young people; and a range of alternative crisis services.

NHS Mental Health Dashboard