Publication, Part of Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics
Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics, Performance October 2025
Official statistics
New Breakdowns
As part of this Performance October 2025 publication, the following 5 breakdowns have been added to all referral spell measures
- England; Pathway
- Provider; Pathway
- Commissioning Region; Pathway
- ICB of GP or Residence; Pathway
- Sub ICB of GP or Residence; Pathway
These referral-spell breakdowns will allocate referral-spell data into four overlapping categories based on primary reason for referral and service/team type. The categories are:
- autism
- other neurodevelopmental
- gender identity
- all ‘other’ referrals
For more information on the breakdowns, please see the quick guide for children and young people waiting times (referral spells).
Full details are available in the Metadata file and Mental Health Services publication list.
11 December 2025 09:30 AM
Issue with metrics relating to rates for IMD
An issue was uncovered which meant that rates relating to IMD where lower than the true value. The counts presented for IMD are correct.
This issue extends to metrics (including sub metrics) relating to IPS Access (MHS116), CYP Access (MHS95), Detentions (MHS157), CTOs (MHS158) and OAPS. Incorrect data has been removed from this publication. Provisional data will not be restated but these metrics will be released correctly as part of the end of year final data.
11 February 2026 17:00 PM
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 October-25 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.
Mental Health publications consultation
NHS England are consulting on the future of Mental Health reporting. This consultation covers the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics, the Mental Health Bulletin and the Mental Health Act, Annual Figures publications.
The consultation is designed to help make decisions about future reporting and to ensure that the data provided is as useful as possible.
If you would like to discuss your views in more detail with us, please email [email protected] including "Mental Health Publications consultation" 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 October, there were 2.21 million people were in contact with mental health services, at the end of October; the majority of these (1.52 million) were in contact with adult mental health services.
- There were 505,178 people had an open referral with children and young people’s mental health services, and 304,429 people has an open referral with learning disabilities and autism services.
- 520,994 new referrals were received into services during October, and 2.54 million care contacts were attended.
- 23,885 people were subject to the Mental Health Act at the end of October, including 16,592 people detained in hospital.
Key Facts Based on 'Performance' data (superseded by 'End of Year Final' statistics)
- At the end of October, there were 2.17 million people in contact with services; the majority of these (1.46 million) were in adult mental health services.
- There were 507,136 people in contact with children and young people’s mental health services and 306,539 in learning disabilities and autism services.
- 503,628 new referrals were received into services during October, and 2.48 million care contacts were attended.
- 23,527 people were subject to the Mental Health Act at the end of October, including 16,797 people detained in hospital.
This is the seventh monthly release using data collected under MHSDS version 6. Please refer to the October 2025 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 10:18 am