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Mental health statistics: prevalence, services and funding in England

This briefing examines how common mental health conditions are in England, as well as access to and funding for mental health services. How long do people wait to access NHS therapy for depression and anxiety? Do statistics show that mental health services work for everyone? How much is spent on mental health services?

How widespread are mental health conditions?

The main official estimates of mental health prevalence in England come from NHS England’s psychiatric morbidity surveys of adults and children. These surveys use clinically validated mental disorder screening and assessment techniques to provide reliable estimates of the mental health of the population over time.

Local level data is not available from these national surveys.

Adult mental health

The 2023/24 survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing in England found that 20% of people aged 16+ (one in five) had experienced symptoms of a common mental health disorder, such as depression or anxiety, in the past week.

These mental health disorders were more common among women than men in every age category. This difference was most pronounced among those aged 16 to 24 years.

Prevalence has increased since the first survey took place in 1993, as shown in the charts below.

Source: NHS England Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey: Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, England, 2023/24, tables 1.3 and 1.4.

Children’s mental health

The 2023 survey of children and young people’s mental health found that 20% of children aged 8 to 16 had a probable mental disorder in 2023, up from 12% in 2017.

The proportion of children with a probable mental health condition was lower among children aged 8 to 10 than in older age groups.

Rates of a probable mental disorder were relatively similar among boys and girls aged 8 to 16. While among those aged 17 to 19, the prevalence of a probable mental disorder was almost twice as high in young women (31.6%) as in young men (15.4%), as shown below.

Source: NHS England Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, 2023 - wave 4 follow up to the 2017 survey, table 1.2

Severe mental health conditions

NHS England and the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) used a database of anonymised GP patient records to produce estimates of the prevalence of severe mental illness (SMI). SMI conditions include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychosis.

These 2023-based estimates suggested that around 550,000 people aged over 14 years in England had some form of SMI (1.16% of the population).

Around 200,000 were estimated to have bipolar disorder, 178,000 had schizophrenia and 172,000 had some other form of psychosis.

Estimates at local authority and integrated care board (ICB) area are available from the Department for Health and Social Care’s Adult mental health and wellbeing profile.

Constituency-level estimates of mental health conditions

The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) for NHS GPs includes data on the proportion of patients in GP records who are flagged as having depression and severe mental illness (SMI).

The Library has used practice-level QOF data to produce modelled estimates of health conditions at constituency level. You can view estimates of depression and SMI prevalence for constituencies, and local areas within them, on our health conditions dashboard:

• Constituency data: Health conditions - House of Commons Library

Access to NHS mental health services

NHS secondary mental health services

NHS Digital’s Mental Health Bulletin contains annual statistics on people in contact with NHS-funded secondary mental health, learning disability and autism services.

Around 4.13 million people in England were in contact with these services at some point during 2024/25. This represented just over 7% of the population, the highest proportion since the data series began in 2016/17, as shown in the chart below.

Source: NHS England Mental Health Bulletin 2024/25

Around 1.22 million of those in contact with services were children younger than 18 years.

Contact with mental health services across England

Access to and contact with mental health services varies across the country for both adults and children.

Among adults, the highest level of contact was in South Tyneside sub-integrated care board (ICB), where 19.4% of the adult population were in contact with mental health services during 2024/25. The lowest was Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire sub-ICB (5.1%).

Among children, the highest level of contact was in West Leicestershire (21.0%) and the lowest was in Southend (0.6%).

The maps below show the percentage of people accessing services in 2024/25 by sub-ICB area.

Source: NHS England, Mental Health Bulletin 2024/25. 

More timely data is available from NHS England’s Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics which gives an overview of the number of people with open referrals and accessing services. The publication includes an interactive Mental Health Services Time Series Dashboard which for some measures includes data provider (mental health trusts) and sub-ICB areas.

Waiting times for secondary mental health services

NHS England’s Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics publication includes data on the median and 90th percentile waiting times between referral and second care contact for adult community mental health services.

The median waiting time shows the exact middle point of all waiting times, meaning half the people have waited longer than this time and half have waited less.

The 90th percentile waiting time shows the time within which 9 out of 10 of patients receive their care contact. One in 10 people on the waiting list have to wait longer than this.

The most recent data, for the quarter ending May 2026, shows that the median waiting time between referral and second contact in England was 37 days, and the 90th percentile waiting time was 169 days.

These figures were an improvement on the May 2025 figures with a median waiting time of 44 days and a 90th percentile waiting time of 221 days.

Separate data is available for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) waiting times.

The latest data can be accessed from our pages on:

• FAQ: Autism statistics (England).
• FAQ: ADHD statistics (England).

NHS talking therapies for depression and anxiety (TTAD)

The NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression programme (TTAD) offers therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy, counselling and self-help support – collectively known as ‘talking therapies’ – for working-age people experiencing common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. People can be referred to TTAD by their GP, or they can self-refer.

The TTAD programme has service targets including:

• First Treatment Waiting Time: 75% of people referred should start their first treatment within six weeks.
• Second Treatment Waiting Time: 95% of people referred should start treatment within 18 weeks.
• Reliable Recovery: At least 50% of patients who complete treatment and were initially meeting clinical “caseness” (severe enough symptoms) should move to a recovered state.
• Reliable Improvement: At least 68% of patients who complete two or more sessions should show reliable clinical improvement in their symptoms.

The most recent NHS TTAD annual report shows that in 2024/25, 1.81 million people in England were referred to TTAD, 1.21 million entered treatment, and 670,400 finished a course of treatment. The number of people entering treatment reached its highest level of 1.26 million in 2023/24, as shown in the chart below.

Source: NHS England NHS Talking Therapies, for anxiety and depression, Annual reports, data files, main table.

The average waiting time for a first treatment in England was 20.2 days, while the average waiting time between first and second treatment was 66.7 days. 

91.6 % of those finishing a course of TTAD treatment in 2024/25 waited less than six weeks for their first treatment, above the target of 75%.

Among those receiving a second treatment, 82.7% started treatment within 18 weeks, below the target of 95%.

50.5% of those finishing a course of TTAD treatment moved to recovery (meaning that they were no longer classed as having a clinical case of a mental health problem), which met the target of 50%.

NHS England maintains an NHS Talking Therapies interactive dashboard which allows you to view regional, ICB-level and provider-level data broken down by age, gender, ethnicity and deprivation.

Children and young people’s eating disorder services

In 2016 the NHS in England introduced a waiting times standard that 95% of children and young people with an eating disorder should receive treatment within one week for urgent cases and within four weeks for routine cases.

These targets have not yet been met, although there has been a general trend of improvement in recent years, albeit fluctuating. In the quarter ending May 2026, an estimated 73% of urgent referrals were seen within one week and 74% of routine referrals were seen within four weeks, as shown below.

Source: NHS England’s Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics, time series data

Detention under the Mental Health Act

NHS England also publish Mental Health Act annual statistics.

Under the act, people with a mental health 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).

The latest data for 2024/25 shows that people were detained 52,731 times under the Mental Health Act in England.

Detention rates were higher for men and boys (90.1 per 100,000 population) than women or girls (80.0 per 100,000 population).

Among the five broad ethnic groups, detention rates were highest for the ‘Black or Black British’ group (262.4 detentions per 100,000 population), nearly four times those of the White group (65.8 per 100,000 population), which was the lowest ethnic group in 2024/25.

• Among adults, detention rates tend to decline with age. Known detention rates for the 18 to 34 age group (132.2detentions per 100,000 population) were around 69% higher than for those aged 65+ (78.4 per 100,000 population).
• The most deprived areas had the highest rates of detention (150.3 detentions per 100,000 population). This was over three and a half times higher than the rate of detention in the least deprived areas (41.4 detentions per 100,000 population).

An interactive Mental Health Act dashboard published alongside the annual statistics allows you to view sub-ICB level data broken down by age, gender, ethnicity and deprivation.

Spending on mental health services

Most local mental health funding is not ring-fenced, meaning that each local NHS area determines its own mental health budget from its overall funding allocation. This means that neither the government nor NHS England determines exactly how much funding goes to mental health services in local areas.

NHS England’s Mental Health Dashboard provides a national and local overview of spending on mental health services.

In 2025/26, local NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) plan to spend £18.0 billion on mental health, learning disability and dementia services in England. This is 14.2% of the total funding allocated to ICBs for health services. NHS England plans to spend a further £2.6 billion on specialised commissioning for mental health services, giving a total spend of £20.6 billion. This figure has risen by 31% in real terms since 2016/17, when mental health spending was £15.8 billion (in 2025/26 prices), as shown in the chart below.

Sources: NHS England NHS Mental Health Dashboard and HMT GDP deflators June 2026

While mental health spending is not ring-fenced, ICBs are expected to meet the ‘mental health investment standard’ (MHIS). This requires increases in local mental health spending to be at least as large, proportionally speaking, as overall increases in local funding. So, if a ICB receives a 5% increase in its funding allocation, it must increase its mental health spending by at least 5% to meet the MHIS.

The MHIS is expected to be met in 2025/26 and has been consistently met by ICBs in previous years. For more, see the NHS Mental Health Dashboard.

Previous versions of the NHS mental health dashboard included details of local (sub-ICB-level) expenditure on mental health services. The dashboard has now been discontinued but figures up to the end of June 2025 can be accessed from the archived NHS mental health dashboard.

ICB-level expenditure on mental health services in 2025/26 is expected to be published in the autumn of 2026.

Where to find data on mental health services in the UK

Because health is a devolved policy area, data is collected and published separately for each UK nation. The links below provide a selection of sources for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 

Scotland

• Chapter 2 of the Scottish Health Surveyprovides information on mental health and wellbeing
• Public Health Scotland publishesdata on Mental health inpatient activity, data on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) waiting times, and Psychological therapies waiting times
• The Scottish Government publishes aMental health inpatient census, which includes statistics including bed numbers, demographics of inpatients, and diagnoses.

Wales

• The Welsh Government has collated a list oflist of mental health data sources
• Public Health Wales has published areport and data on mental health and wellbeing in Wales
• Datasets on mental health admissionsand detentions under the Mental Health Act are published by StatsWales
• The Welsh Government publishesdata on Specialist Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service first appointment waiting times

Northern Ireland

• The Office for Statistics Regulation have published aReview of mental health statistics in Northern Ireland.
• The Health and Social Care Board have published aYouth Wellbeing Prevalence Survey.
• TheHealth Survey Northern Ireland includes information on mental health and wellbeing.

Other Library publications

• Children and young people’s mental health (Commons Library)
• Mental health policy in England (Commons Library)