Publication, Part of Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics
Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics, Performance April 2026
Official statistics
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
Changes to the April 2026 publication
The following changes have been implemented in this publication for data from April 2026 onwards:
- Children's eating disorders metrics have been updated to reflect an updated methodology. Further information on the changes to the methodology can be found here, with an updated guide to submitting children's eating disorder data being found here.
- New ICB boundary changes came into effect from April 1 2026. Details of the approach to reporting in this publication can be found below. Further information on these boundary changes can be found here.
Following the consultation around the future of the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics publication, the following changes have been implemented:
- Formatted Excel files are no longer included in the publication. Associated CSV files are still included.
- The following metrics have been removed from the publication:
- EIP64 - Referrals not on EIP pathway, receiving a first contact and assigned a care co-ordinator with any team
- EIP65 - Referrals not on EIP pathway, receiving a first contact and assigned a care co-ordinator with any team more than two weeks after referral
- EIP66 - Referrals not on EIP pathway, receiving a first contact and assigned a care co-ordinator with any team two weeks or less after referral
- EIP67 - Proportion of referrals not on EIP pathway receiving a first contact and assigned a care co-ordinator with any team two weeks or less after referral
- EIP69a - Number of open Referrals with any valid SNOMED-CT activity submitted that were linked to an EIP team in the reporting period; and/or
- EIP69b - Number of open Referrals with any NICE concordant EIP SNOMED-CT activity submitted that were linked to an EIP team in the reporting period.
- Metrics relating to the number of "people in contact with services" have been renamed to "people with an open referral". This change has been made to better reflect the fact that not all people with an open referral have received a contact at the end of the reporting period. This is a change in name only, no change has been made to the methodology.
New metrics
The following new metrics have been added for April 2026 data onwards, these metrics relate to:
- Readmissions within 14 days from discharge from adult acute, older adult acute and PICU beds.
- Those being discharged from community mental health services aged 18 and over with a paired score
- Additional OAPS bed days for those in adult acute, older adult acute and PICU units as well as Adult Mental Health Units for Adults with a Learning Disability and/or Autism, Adult Mental Health Rehabilitation (Mainstream Service), Adult Mental Health Rehabilitation for Adults with a Learning Disability and/or Autism (Specialist Service) and Adult Neuro-Psychiatry / Acquired Brain Injury units
- Further metrics relating to children and young people with an eating disorder.
Full details of these metrics can be found in the Metadata file.
ICB Changes
ICB Mergers
New ICB boundary changes came into effect from April 1 2026. Further information on these boundary changes can be found here. This publication represents the first MHSDS monthly publication to reflect these changes in ICB boundaries.
Availability of Postcode Lookups for MHSDS Measures
MHSDS-derived metrics assign activity to commissioning geographies (Sub-ICB locations, ICBs, and regions) based on the location of the patients registered GP practice where available. In the few instances that this is unavailable, the activity is assigned based on the patient’s postcode.
The data presented in this publication is largely based on the Sub ICB, ICB or Region of GP Practice or Residence. In order to derive Sub ICB (and then subsequently ICB and Region), reference data is used to map directly from the submitted GP Practice code and Postcode of Residence. The reference data for the postcode mapping of in-month metrics (i.e. those that solely report data related to April 2026) was not updated in time for the processing of data in this publication. This means that where a person does not have a valid GP Practice code, and they reside in the old Frimley Sub ICB boundary, the data will not map properly. In those instances, data will be presented as Unknown. Once this reference data is fixed and available, NHS England intends to reissue data for the April 2026 publication which corrects the calculation. There is no confirmed date for the reissuing of this data currently.
For rolling metrics (eg last 3 months, last 12 months), a new mapping has been introduced that remaps data to the 2026-27 boundaries. This means that data presented for metrics of this nature are fully aligned to the latest boundaries. This mapping has been necessary as the data collected and processed for 2025-26 has been derived based on the 2025-26 boundaries. This extra step in the methodology ensures that patients who were registered or lived in Frimley are properly allocated for 2026-27 reporting. Without this additional step, patients with a GP Practice or Residence in Frimley who accessed services in 2025-26 would not be allocated to any Sub ICB in the latest data and be grouped in the "UNKNOWN" category.
Availability of Population Estimates Data
NHS England have been informed that the population data for the new boundaries will not be released by ONS until Autumn 2026 (with a scheduled release window of October or November). Thus any metrics which employ population data to create a population rate (or subsequent metrics which utilise those rates) cannot be calculated directly using the existing population data. To address this, populations have been 'mapped-forward', ie the population of the Frimley Sub ICB has been mapped into the three Sub ICBs. As Frimley ICB is being split into three ICBs, Frimley’s population will be apportioned across the three ICBs to create new interim ICB population estimates. The proportions used are as follows:
- NHS SURREY AND SUSSEX ICB - 92A increase their existing population by 13.3% (to reflect 18.2% of the Frimley population)
- NHS HAMPSHIRE AND ISLE OF WIGHT ICB - D9Y0V increase their existing population by 10.8% (to reflect 22.9% of the Frimley population)
- NHS THAMES VALLEY ICB - U2G6B takes 58.9% of the Frimley Sub ICB population (as is a new Sub ICB with no existing population)
These factors have been applied to the population (and its subsequent demographic makeup) and as such some caution should be used when using these rates as they are based on estimates of estimates. Once updated populations are available, these will be used, however there are no specific timelines for this.
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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.
2.26 million people had an open referral with mental health services, at the end of April
The majority of these (1.55 million) had an open referral with adult mental health services
520,488 people had an open referral with children and young people’s mental health services, at the end of April
294,771 people had an open referral with learning disabilities and autism services, at the end of April
462,105 new referrals were received during April
2.34 million care contacts were attended during April
23,783 people were subject to the Mental Health Act, including 16,240 people detained in hospital, at the end of April
Resources
Last edited: 11 June 2026 9:32 am