The NHS Mental Health Dashboard (formerly the Mental Health Five Year Forward View Dashboard) brings together key data from across mental health services to measure the performance of the NHS in delivering our Long Term Plan for mental health.

The NHS Long Term Plan is expanding capacity and improving the quality of effective mental health services and is tackling a treatment gap, that is all the more important to address in the context of the pandemic.

This 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 3 of the 2022/23 financial year.

Mental health services funding and investment

The NHS’s Long Term Plan reaffirms the NHS’s commitment to putting mental health care on a level footing with physical health services.

Since 2015/16, NHS in England has met its commitment that the increase in local funding for mental health (excluding learning disabilities and dementia) is at least in line with the overall increase in the money available to Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). This is called the Mental Health Investment Standard (MHIS). From 2019/20 onwards, as part of the NHS Long Term Plan, the NHS has made a renewed commitment that funding for mental health services will grow faster than the overall NHS budget, creating a new ringfenced local investment fund worth at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24.  The MHIS also includes a further commitment that local funding for mental health will grow by an additional percentage increment to reflect additional mental health funding being made available to integrated care boards (ICBs) (previously CCGs).

Finance data is only updated for the Q1 and Q4 dashboard. The dashboard therefore still shows the finance position as at Q1 2022/23. Systems are currently finalising their accounts for 2022/23 and finalising independent reviews of their 2021/22 MHIS spend and the impact of both of these will be reflected in the Q4 2022/23 dashboard which is planned for publication in August 2023.

For 2018/19 and 2019/20, CCGs were required to have their reported spend on mental health externally validated with regards to meeting the MHIS. CCGs have now published their review compliance statement and reporting accountants’ report on their website for both years. Issues with governance and assurance that were identified through the review process are being addressed by NHS England’s Mental Health and Finance, regional and CCG leadership teams. CCGs are currently working through an independent review of their achievement of the Mental Health Investment Standard in 2021/22. Additionally, some mental health services are paid for with funding delivered at the national level. When spend on specialised commissioning services is added to local ICB mental health spending, the total planned spend for mental health funding (including learning disabilities and dementia) is £15.56 billion in 2022/23.

The NHS Long Term Plan commitment that spending on children and young people’s mental health services will increase faster than overall spending on mental health has also been met.

Due to changes in CCG allocation in 2021/22, in particular the move from central support funding for systems to CCG allocation, the calculation of mental health spend (including learning disabilities and dementia) is not comparable between 2021/22 and previous years. In 2022/23 13.8% of local health spend is being allocated to mental health (including learning disabilities and dementia).

Mental health support

By 2023/24, investment in the Long Term Plan will deliver timely, high quality mental health support, including:

• Continued investment to expand specialist community perinatal mental health services so that 66,000 new and expectant mothers with moderate to severe or complex perinatal mental health needs access evidenced based care closer to home when they need it.
• Expanding services to ensure that at least an additional 345,000 children and young people aged 0-24 will be able to access support via NHS funded mental health services and school or college-based Mental Health Support Teams.
• All children and young people experiencing a mental health crisis will be able to access crisis care 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a single point of access including through NHS 111.
• The NHS will provide a single-point of access and timely, age-appropriate, universal mental health crisis care for everyone, accessible via NHS 111.
• People with moderate to severe mental illnesses will access better quality care across primary and community teams, have greater choice and control over the care they receive, and be supported to lead fulfilling lives in their communities.

Evaluating progress

A cyber incident in August 2022 affected some datasets that inform the dashboard. Apart from NHS Talking Therapies, Out of Area Placements and Physical Health checks for people with severe mental illness (SMI), all quarterly data at national level is comprised of estimated figures for Q3 2022/23. These indicators are marked in orange and the estimated figures should be viewed with caution, not a robust reflection of activity. It has not been possible to update these indicators below national level for this quarter.

The Dashboard allows NHS England to track the delivery of its national ambitions for mental health. Great progress has been made since the publication of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and the Long Term Plan. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health services have remained open and continued to deliver against our commitments set out in the Long Term Plan:

• In the previous national survey of adult crisis teams in 2018, fewer than 50% were 24/7, open access or had home treatment teams staffed to offer a genuine alternative to admission. There has been significant progress since that time, with now close to 100% of teams operating 24/7 and open to the public (all ages) and with 85% staffed to offer ‘fidelity’ to the home treatment team model. Further, anyone (of any age) can now find their local 24/7 NHS urgent mental health helpline number at nhs.uk/urgentmentalhealth through a new service finder.
• The results from the 6th National Survey of Liaison Psychiatry have now been published. There was significant growth in liaison psychiatry services between the 2019 and 2022 surveys; 61% of total services now meet Core 24 or equivalent standards.
• For the first time, all emergency department sites are now offering access to a liaison service or access to local crisis support (via in-reach) on a 24/7 basis, with 92% of these services being provided by on-site liaison service. This is up from 66% in the 2018 survey, and 39% in 2016.
• In April 2021 a new headline metric was introduced to monitor how many under 18s receive at least one contact from an NHS funded service to monitor the NHS Long Term Plan Children and Young People’s Mental Health access ambition that an additional 345,000 children and young people aged 0-24 will have access to support via NHS funded services and school or college-based Mental Health Support Teams by 2023/24. Reported estimate of under-18s receiving at least one contact in Q3 2022/23 was 704,311 (rolling 12-month data as at the end of Q3). Data for young adults (18-24-year-olds) is monitored separately; at the end of Q3 2022/23 (rolling 12-month total), 221,114 young adults aged 18-24 received at least one contact from NHS-funded services (excluding NHS Talking Therapies).
• The SDCS data collection for children and young people’s eating disorder services, published every quarter, has shown a significant increase in demand for treatment as well as an increase in the number starting treatment since the start of the pandemic.  This increased demand has impacted the system’s ability to meet the CYP Eating Disorder Standard. In Q3 2022/23, a total of 3,130 CYP started both urgent and routine/non-urgent treatment (numbers published separately). There has been some improvement in performance against the CYP ED Access & Waiting Time (AWT) Standard; in Q3 of 2022/23, 77.5% (428 out of 553) of children and young people with an eating disorder started treatment within one week in urgent cases, compared to 67.9% (359 out of 529) in Q1 2022/23, and 80.7% (2,080 out of 2,577) started treatment within four weeks for non-urgent cases, compared to 69.1% (1,587 out of 2,297) in Q1 2022/23. Both, however, remain below the national standard of 95% and it is too early to comment on what this might mean for future performance.
• The SDCS collection will be retired at the end of the 2022/23 reporting period and the CYP ED AWT Standard will be monitored using MHSDS from April 2023 onwards.
• Since April 2019, there has been a specialist community perinatal mental health service in every ICS area of England. In Q3 2022/23, estimated access to specialist perinatal mental health services increased to 49,130 women compared to 40,411 in Q3 2021/22. However, access is below the planned growth trajectory in 2022/23. Services are being supported to recover this trajectory as soon as possible, to meet national LTP ambitions by 2023/24. From Q3 2021/22, PMH data included access figures from Maternal Mental Health Service (MMHS).
• Access to the recently re-named NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression, has improved in Q3 2022/23, with 89.3% of those starting treatment in less than six weeks.
• CYP crisis services continue to expand at pace and are on track to meet the target of 100% coverage by the end of 2023/24.

Progress against other ambitions and delivery of mental health programmes that are measured outside of the Dashboard are published elsewhere.

NHS Mental Health Dashboard

• Access the NHS Mental Health Dashboard