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.
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.