Accident and Emergency Departments: Mental Illness

(asked on 9th January 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the number of individuals who have attended accident and emergency departments in England for issues related to mental health in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.


This question was answered on 12th January 2017

Information on the number of accident and emergency (A&E) attendances where the primary diagnosis was a psychiatric condition is available from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES). This is shown in the table below and covers the period 2010-11 to 2015-16. The rise shown in the following table may be as a result of reduced stigma in relation to mental health and increased quality of recording.

Count of all A&E attendances (excluding planned attendances)1 and A&E attendances (excluding planned attendances) where there was a primary diagnosis of a psychiatric condition2 for 2010-11 to 2015-16

Year

All A&E attendances (excluding planned attendances)

A&E attendances (excluding planned) with a primary diagnosis of psychiatric condition

Proportion of all attendances (excluding planned attendances) with primary diagnosis of psychiatric condition

2010-11

15,818,846

93,176

0.59%

2011-12

17,286,648

112,173

0.65%

2012-13

18,005,435

124,012

0.69%

2013-14

18,197,530

142,265

0.78%

2014-15

19,254,853

145,926

0.76%

2015-16

20,168,071

165,371

0.82%

Source: Hospital Episode Data (HES) NHS Digital

Notes:

1A&E attendances (excluding planned attendances): planned attendances have been excluded from these figures

2 A&E diagnosis - psychiatric condition

The recording of the diagnosis field within the A&E data set is not mandatory. It is not known to what extent changes over time are as a result of improvements in recording practice. The diagnosis code used was 35 = Psychiatric conditions.

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