About the dataset
Now in its 15th year, the NHS Benchmarking Network's Adult and Older People's Mental Health benchmarking dataset provides a comprehensive, UK-wide view of mental health service provision.
The latest dataset delivers robust, comparable data on adult and older people's community and inpatient mental health services across all four UK nations.
The dataset brings together key performance, activity, workforce and financial metrics, offering valuable insights into service delivery, variation and best practice. The findings support service improvement, strategic planning and informed decision-making at local, regional and national levels.
All data and reporting are aligned with current UK-wide service, policy and practice priorities. While health policy and service models vary across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there is strong alignment around shared priorities for delivering safe, effective, high-quality mental health care.
This year's spotlight
Access and waiting times
Urgent care
Crisis and liaison team response times, crisis referrals that lead to admission and section 136 activity
Community services
Median waits from referral to first and second appointments, and waiting list size
Inpatient flow
Occupancy, length of stay, 30-day readmissions, follow-up after discharge and bed days lost to patients clinically ready for discharge
Everything side by side
Members see inpatient, community and crisis care data collected in the same way and in one place, compare with similar organisations, and adjust for population so results are standardised across organisational sizes.
Meet the team
Danny Iyoha,
Delivery Manager, Adult & Older People's Mental Health Dataset
Key themes
Community mental health services
Access
Waiting times
Caseload
Contacts
Workforce
Finance
Health inequalities
Racial inequality
Gender inequality
Inpatient mental health services
Bed capacity and occupancy
Patient safety
Lengths of stay
Detentions under the Mental Health Act
Workforce
FInance
Outcomes
Patient-reported outcome and experience measures
Clinician-reported outcomes
Productivity metrics
Community and inpatient services
Re-referrals and readmissions
Did not attends (DNAs)
Contacts delivered by the workforce
HR metrics
Financial sustainability
Over 11,000 metrics
Explore as much detail as you need through the toolkit and other project outputs.
"We are actively utilising benchmarking data to inform our recovery and improvement work focused on reducing waiting lists and enhancing productivity across adult mental health services."
Upkar Jheeta
Head of Mental Health Transformation, Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust
11,000+
metrics across inpatient, community and crisis care
15th year
covering all four UK nations