Annual Mental Health Act detentions published

NHS Digital has published new figures on the number of detentions carried out under the Mental Health Act in 2018-19.

This publication provides the official statistics about people with a mental disorder who are detained in hospital in the interests of their own health or for the safety and protection of others, under the Act. It also covers people treated in the community under a Community Treatment Order¹.

It includes people in secure psychiatric hospitals, other NHS Trusts and independent providers.

The data allows comparisons to be made based on age, sex and ethnicity.

This report does not cover:

• People in hospital voluntarily for mental health treatment, as they have not been detained under the Act²

• Uses of Section 136 where the place of safety was a police station³

National data published from the 2016-17 publication onwards can’t be compared to previous publications due to a change in the data set.⁴   However an estimate of the percentage change in detentions is provided each year.

Local comparisons in this current publication may be subject to data quality issues due to missing or incomplete data returns.⁵ Further guidance on data quality, including information at provider level, is included in the publication.

ENDS

Read the full report

Mental Health Act Statistics, Annual Figures 2018-19

Notes to editors

1. People treated under a Community Treatment Order (CTO) are subject to recall to hospital for assessment and/or treatment.
2. These figures can be found in the Mental Health Bulletin
3. These figures are published by the Home Office
4. The report contains trend estimates from a group of providers where the data quality has been judged to be sufficient to make a comparison.
5. Former submitters to the KP90 collection who have not submitted this year are highlighted in the report. Providers who missed one or more monthly submissions have been shown as having incomplete data submissions.

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