Mental Health Bulletin, 2023-24 Annual report

• 3,790,826 people were known to be in contact with secondary mental health, learning disabilities and autism services at some point during 2023-24.
• 1,139,355 of these were under 18 years of age and 2,634,359 were aged 18 or over
• Changes in scope, issues with the quality of some submissions and the increase in submitting providers have impacted on the comparability of statistics prior to 2016-17 with 2016-17 onwards. Full details of this can be found in the Making comparisons with previous years section of this report.
• Statistics for people of all ages prior to 2016-17 are most closely comparable with statistics for people aged 18 or over from 2016-17 onwards due to the inclusion of mental health services for children and young people from this year.

• 16.1% of people aged 90 or over (83,908) and 13.6% of people aged between 85 and 89 years old (125,995) and 9.5% of people aged between 80 and 84 years old (139,733) in England were known to be in contact with secondary mental health, learning disabilities or autism services during 2023-24. This will include people in contact with these services because of organic mental health disorders such as dementia. This compares to 6.6% of people of all ages who were known to be in contact with secondary mental health, learning disabilities or autism services during 2023-24.
• 3.4% of people aged 18 or over (89,474) known to be in contact with secondary mental health, learning disabilities or autism services had spent time admitted as an inpatient as part of their care during 2023-24.

• 21.5% of 16 year old females (70,963) and 18.8% of 17 year old females (60,985) in England were known to be in contact with secondary mental health, learning disabilities or autism services during 2023-24. 13.0% of 16 year old males (45,545) and 11.6% of 17 year old males (39,990) in England were known to be in contact with these services.
• The number of in-year bed days for females aged under 18 known to be in contact with secondary mental health, learning disabilities or autism services during 2023-24 were 208,049. The number of in-year bed days for males aged under 18 known to be in contact with secondary mental health, learning disabilities or autism services during 2023-24 were 53,639. This is compared to 252,640 bed days for females aged under 18 and 51,698 bed days for males aged under 18 in 2022-23.
• The number of people in contact with secondary mental health services aged 11 to 15 has decreased from 562,651 in 2022-23 to 541,446 to 2023-24, a decrease of 3.8%

Between 2022-23 and 2023-24:

• The number of people in contact with services increased by 5.8%, from 3,582,864 to 3,790,826.
• The number of in year bed days decreased by 1.2%, from 9,512,771 to 9,403,315. 
• The number of admissions increased by 0.4%, from 102,366 to 102,738. 
• The number of discharges increased by 1.5%, from 100,452 to 101,981.
• The number of care contacts increased by 9.2%, from 27,668,163 to 30,210,248.  In 2023-24, 82.1% of all care contacts were attended, compared with 83.9% in 2022-23.