Summary

Description

This bulletin presents the latest information on uses of the Mental Health Act 1983 ("The Act") in England (excluding guardianship under Sections 7 and 37) between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2012 ("2011/12"). Data were collected via the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) online Omnibus KP90 collection from all organisations in England which provide Mental Health Services and make use of the Mental Health Act 1983 legislation, as amended by the Mental Health Act 2007, and other legislation. This includes high security psychiatric hospitals as well as other NHS service providers and independent hospitals. These statistics are important in monitoring uses of The Act and will be of interest to mental health professionals as well as service users, their families and representative organisations. Significant improvements to these statistics have been made in response to user feedback received during a public consultation on this publication held in early 2012. Changes include refinements to measures and terminology, redesigned reference tables and new analysis derived from the Mental Health Minimum Dataset (MHMDS) and police custody databases. The latest data for 2011/12 suggest that the number of people subject to detention under the Mental Health Act continues to rise. There is increasing use of Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) with nearly half ending with the reinstatement of the underlying detention Section.