Publication, Part of Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics
Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics, Performance February 2026
Official statistics
Issue with MHS148 (Referrals with a presenting complaint)
Please note, NHS England is aware of an issue with metric MH148 (Number of open referrals with a Presenting Complaint recorded at the end of the reporting period). The issue means that data is estimated to be 25-30% higher than the true value. Given this data is provided to support data quality and provide context, no action is being taken to correct these figures for 24-25. Data for 25-26 will be corrected in due course with the publication of the end of year files.
30 June 2026 12:00 PM
Issue with EIP68 (EIP Caseload)
Please note, an issue has been uncovered regarding EIP68 (EIP Caseload (Number of Referrals open to EIP services with at least one attended contact at the end of the reporting period). The aggregation of this metric meant that some referrals were counted more than once. For data for March 2025, the scale of the issue was an overcount of around 23%. Data will not be retrospectively updated for 2025-26 and previous. Data for July 2026 onwards will be corrected with data for April to June 2026 being updated when the end of year runs for 2026-27 occur. As a result of this, users should exercise caution when using this metric.
27 August 2026 11:00 AM
Summary
This publication provides the timeliest picture available of people using NHS funded secondary mental health, learning disabilities and autism services in England, excluding those who are solely in contact with Talking Therapies. This information will be of use to people needing access to information quickly for operational decision making and other purposes. More detailed information on the quality and completeness of these statistics is available in the Data Quality section, as well as within the Data Coverage and Data Quality VODIM and Integrity files available under 'Resources'.
Highlights
Release of 'End of Year Final' 2025-26 data
'End of Year Final' versions of the main monthly csv files for each month between April 2025 and March 2026, collected under MHSDS version 6, which reflect revised 2025-26 Multiple Submission Window Model submissions that occurred after 'Performance' monthly data had already been published are now available.
The following files will be re-issued using end-of-year 'final' data
- Monthly 'Main' csv
- Monthly 'Restrictive Interventions' csv
- Monthly 'Out of Area Placements' csv
- Monthly 'Mental Health Services Measures to support the Adult Social Care Outcome Framework' csv
- Monthly 'Referral Spells' csv
- Monthly 'Adult Social Care Outcome Framework' csv
- Monthly 'Time series' csv
- Monthly 'Time Series for Out of Area Placements' csv
The 25/26 data in the monthly time-series file to be issued for the February-26 reporting period will be based on final, end-of-year data.
Please refer to the relevant monthly publication pages available from the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics series page for further details and to access the 'End of Year Final' 2025-26 data.
Contact Us
If you have any views or feedback that you would like to discuss with us, please email [email protected] including "Mental Health Publications feedback" in the subject.
Access the code used to create this report
The code used to create the outputs for this report is available on our NHS Digital GitHub webpage.
Key Facts
Key Facts Based on 'End of Year Final' data
- At the end of February, there were 2.32 million people were in contact with mental health services, at the end of February; the majority of these (1.61 million) were in contact with adult mental health services.
- There were 523,404 people had an open referral with children and young people’s mental health services, and 303,665 people has an open referral with learning disabilities and autism services.
- 491,403 new referrals were received into services during February, and 2.26 million care contacts were attended.
- 23,852 people were subject to the Mental Health Act at the end of February, including 16,397 people detained in hospital.
Key Facts Based on 'Performance' data (superseded by 'End of Year Final' statistics)
- At the end of February, there were 2.19 million people in contact with services; the majority of these (1.50 million) were in adult mental health services.
- There were 502,086 people in contact with children and young people’s mental health services and 298,918 in learning disabilities and autism services.
- 469,607 new referrals were received into services during February, and 2.22 million care contacts were attended.
- 22,866 people were subject to the Mental Health Act at the end of February, including 16,038 people detained in hospital.
This is the eleventh monthly release using data collected under MHSDS version 6. Please refer to the February 2026 publication for an outline of the changes to the dataset introduced by the move to MHSDS version 6. Full details of the changes to the dataset are available in the Technical Output Specification and the updated constructions for all measures in this publication are available in the metadata file.
Resources
Last edited: 28 August 2026 10:20 am