Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 24 January 2019 to Question 209278 on Mental Health Services, (a) what proportion of people aged 18 and over in contact with National Health Service-funded secondary mental health services the 4,224 figure represents and (b) how his Department defines a speech related disability.

At the end of October 2018, 941,561 people were recorded as being in contact with National Health Service-funded mental health services and aged 18 and over. Therefore, the figure of 4,224, for people who were also recorded as having a speech related disability, represents 0.45% of the total.

The data is sourced from the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS). In the MHSDS User Guidance, the specific Code used to record speech related disabilities defines its use as appropriate in cases where “the patient has difficulty speaking or using language to communicate or make their needs known”. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-sets/mental-health-services-data-set/mental-health-services-data-set-specifications-and-guidance