We have detected that you are using Internet Explorer to visit this website. Internet Explorer is now being phased out by Microsoft. As a result, NHS Digital no longer supports any version of Internet Explorer for our web-based products, as it involves considerable extra effort and expense, which cannot be justified from public funds. Some features on this site will not work. You should use a modern browser such as Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. If you have difficulty installing or accessing a different browser, contact your IT support team.
Request received
Request received for early release of Mental Health statistics based on Provisional September 2020 Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) data to aid understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on mental health services.
Our response
Care should be taken when interpreting these statistics as the data quality of provisional data is not as complete as performance data and it will cover a lower set of providers. As such the data will be limited to providing a large sample of provider activity across the country but not a full national picture. This is because provisional data is based on the initial submission from providers to the MHSDS. The submission process encourages one month for an initial submission and a second month for more complete submissions where data quality and completeness can be improved. There is no obligation to provide the primary submission and so a number of providers provide a single submission in the second month. The earlier primary submission is used to provide more timely information on service activity.
The usual, accompanying data quality and guidance information is not included here. This information will be published alongside these statistics (and others) in the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics Performance August, Provisional September 2020 publication released Thursday 12/11/2020.