Mental Health Bulletin: 2015-16 Annual Report

This annual Mental Health Bulletin provides a comprehensive picture of people who used adult secondary mental health and learning disabilities services. This report is based on submissions made using version 1.1  of the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Dataset (MHLDDS) between April 2015 and November 2015. MHLDDS was superseded by the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) on 1 January 2016. Based on the results of a consultation on these statistics, 2015/16 figures here are only based on records submitted to MHLDDS. The figures shown are an estimate of what these figures may have been if they had been based on the full financial year. Details of how these estimates were produced can be found in the executive summary of this publication.

Analysis of monthly submissions and associated data quality measures has already been released as monthly publications (around 10 weeks after the end of the month reported on). These monthly publications can be accessed through the link at the bottom of this page.
 
For consistency, much of the information produced in this publication are updates to those produced in last year's publication, allowing you to compare this information for 2015/16 to previous years.

Time series have been maintained at a high level within our reference tables, but in many places analysis has been limited to 2011/12 as the earliest time period. This is because significant changes were made to the MHMDS in this year which means that information before this is not directly comparable. Additionally, the expansion in scope of the dataset to include people in contact with learning disability services means that local knowledge may be required to interpret changes in the information presented between 2013/14 and 2014/15.

The 2015/16 Mental Health Bulletin is published on the same day as the Inpatients Formally Detained in Hospitals Under the Mental Health Act 1983 and Patients Subject to Supervised Community Treatment, England publication for the same year, which can be found at the link at the bottom of this page. Whilst the Inpatients formally detained... publication remains the official source of figures for the year, this publication presents several complementary measures, broken by age, gender, ethnic group and CCG - detail that is not available from the collection that Inpatients formally detained... is based upon.

In future years the Inpatients formally detained... publication will be sourced from the same information used in the Mental Health Bulletin, allowing uses of the Mental Health Act 1983 to be fully understood in the wider context of service use for the first time. Details of this change along with example analysis of what will now be possible using the MHSDS can be found in a special report included in the Inpatients formally detained... publication called Mental Health Act Statistics Improved reporting for better care.