Summary
This publication contains the official statistics about uses of the Mental Health Act1 ('the Act') in England during 2017-18.
Under the Act, people with a mental disorder may be formally detained in hospital (or 'sectioned') in the interests of their own health or safety, or for the protection of other people. They can also be treated in the community but subject to recall to hospital for assessment and/or treatment under a Community Treatment Order (CTO).
Last year, the way we source and produce these statistics changed. Previously these statistics were produced from the KP90 aggregate data collection. They are now produced from the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS). The MHSDS provides a much richer data source for these statistics, allowing for new insights into uses of the Act.
However, some providers that make use of the Act are not yet submitting data to the MHSDS, or submitting incomplete data. Improvements in data quality have been made over the past year. NHS Digital is working with partners to ensure that all providers are submitting complete data and this publication includes guidance on interpreting these statistics.
Footnotes
1 The Mental Health Act 1983 as amended by the Mental Health Act 2007 and other legislation.
Key Facts
In 2017-18:
- 49,551 new detentions under the Mental Health Act were recorded, but the overall national totals will be higher as not all providers submitted data. Trend comparisons are also affected by improving data quality. For the subset of providers that submitted good quality detentions data in each of the last three years, we estimate there was an increase in detentions of 2.4 per cent from last year. Further information is provided in the Background Data Quality Report.
- Comparisons can still be made between groups of people using population-based rates, even though the rates shown are based on incomplete data (see Background Data Quality Report for details). Known detention rates were higher for males (88.9 per 100,000 population) than females (80.9 per 100,000 population).
- Amongst adults, detention rates tend to decline with age. Known detention rates for the 18 to 34 age group (121.8 detentions per 100,000 population) were around a third higher than for those aged 50 to 64 (88.2 per 100,000 population). But rates rose again for the 65+ age group (99.8 per 100,000 population).
- Amongst the five broad ethnic groups, known rates of detention for the ‘Black or Black British’ group (288.7 detentions per 100,000 population) were over four times those of the White group (71.8 per 100,000 population).
- Known rates of CTO use for males (10.8 per 100,000 population) were higher than the rate for females (6.4 per 100,000 population). Across age groups, those aged 35 to 49 had the highest rate of CTO use (14.8 known uses per 100,000 population compared to 8.6 uses per 100,000 population for all age groups).
- Amongst broad ethnic groups, known rates of CTO use for the ‘Black or Black British’ group (56.0 uses per 100,000 population) were over eight times the rate for the White group (6.5 uses per 100,000 population).
Last edited: 8 October 2018 5:41 pm
