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 4 2025-26

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

  • total actual spend on MHIS in 2025/26 is £13.739 billion
  • this exceeds 2024/25 actual MHIS spend of £12.132 billion by 13.2%, an increase of £1.607 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 MHIS spend in 2025/26 compared to 2024/25 would be 10.7%

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

  • in 2025/26 this percentage is maintained at 14.6%

Spending across mental health services (specialised commissioning and ICB combined, including learning disability, autism and dementia) has increased to £21.193 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 spend on learning disability, autism and dementia is £4.799 billion, compared to £4.290 billion in 2024/25, an increase of £0.509 billion (11.9%).

We have published backing data for the quarter 4 2025/26 finance figures.

Evaluating progress in mental health service ambitions – quarter 4 2025-26 update

Ambition Progress in quarter 4 (January 2026 to March 2026)
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 879,955, which is an additional 365,991 people since the start of the NHS Long Term Plan (against a baseline of 513,964). This is an increase on the previous quarter (863,472 in quarter 3 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).
Children and young people (CYP) eating disorder waiting times – achieve and maintain standard of 95%. 76.9% of CYP with an urgent need started treatment within one week (a decrease of 1.9 percentage points from 78.8% in quarter 3 2025/26).

80.4% of CYP started treatment for a routine case within 4 weeks (down 2.9 percentage points from 83.3% in quarter 3 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 67,146 women, compared to 66,845 women in quarter 3 2025/26, exceeding the Long Term Plan ambition.
185,103 people to receive a course of treatment in NHS talking therapies in quarter 4, 2025/26 (75% of patients to be seen within 6 weeks). The number of referrals finishing a course of treatment was 165,294 (up from 164,216 in quarter 3 2025/26).
Of those that finished a course of treatment, 88.5% started treatment within 6 weeks (a very slight decrease from 88.6% in quarter 3 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 702,557. This is an increase of 1% from quarter 3 2025/26 (695,913),  thus the ambition continues to be met.
48,333 people with severe or complex mental health problems to access individual placement and support (IPS) employment services by quarter 4 2025/26. 48,112 people accessed IPS services for severe mental illness (12-month rolling metric). This is an increase from 47,083 in quarter 3 2025/26 and just below the target.
Reduce inequalities by at least 60% of people with SMI receiving an annual physical health check. 65.2% of people with SMI received an annual physical health check, compared to 59.3% last quarter and 66.5% in quarter 4 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 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.