Mental Health Act Statistics, Annual Figures, 2023-24

The White ethnic group is the largest in England, so we would expect this group to have the greatest number of detentions, even if there are missing data. But we can compare detentions for different groups of people (e.g. by age, gender and ethnicity) by expressing them as rates per 100,000 population. This is valid as long as there is no bias caused by the missing data.

Amongst the five broad ethnic groups, detention rates for the ‘Black or Black British’ group (242.3 detentions per 100,000 population) were highest, over 3 and a half times those of the White group (68.4 per 100,000 population), which was the lowest ethnic group in 2023-24.

A more detailed breakdown of the five broad ethnicity groupings shows that the detention rate was highest for those with ‘Any Other Black Background’, which forms part of the ‘Black or British’ group. At 740.6 detentions per 100,000 people, this was about eleven times the rate for the White British group (67.8 detentions per 100,000 people) in 2023-24. The ‘Any Other Mixed Background’ had the second highest rate of detention (283.1 detentions per 100,000 population) followed by the Caribbean group at 230 detentions per 100,000 population.

Analysis of detention rates by gender shows that rates were slightly higher for males (91.4 per 100,000 population) than females (83 per 100,000 population) during 2023-24.

Amongst adults, detention rates tend to decline with age. Detention rates for the 18 to 34 age group (135.9 per 100,000 population) were around 62 percent higher than for those aged 65 and over (83.8 per 100,000 population). Rates for young people aged 16 to 17 (51 per 100,000 population) were lower than for all adult age groups.

Rates of detention increased with deprivation.

Detentions in the most deprived areas had the highest rates of detention (151.3 detentions per 100,000 population). This was about 3 and a half times higher than the rate of detention in the least deprived areas (43.4 detentions per 100,000 population).