About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) waiting times for the quarter ending June 2022. As of June 2022, CAMHS data are available via an interactive dashboard.

NHS Boards made changes to their service delivery in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All NHS Boards have advised that the measures put in place have had an impact on their figures. More information can be found in the Data Quality document.

An update of referrals data from the experimental Child, Adolescent, and Psychological Therapies National Dataset (CAPTND) has been published alongside this publication

Main points

For the quarter ending June 2022:

  • 68.4% of children and young people were seen within 18 weeks of referral, which is a decrease from 73.2% for the previous quarter and also from 72.5% for the same quarter ending June 2021. The Scottish Government standard states that 90% of children and young people should start treatment within 18 weeks of referral to CAMHS.
  • 5,230 children and young people started treatment at CAMHS in Scotland. This is an increase of 4.3% from the 5,016 starting treatment in the previous quarter and an increase of 13.5% from the 4,606 starting treatment in the same quarter the previous year.
  • One in two of the children and young people seen started their treatment within an average of ten weeks, which is an increase from an average of nine weeks in the previous quarter and 7 weeks for quarter ending June 2021.
  • 9,729 children and young people were waiting to start treatment at quarter end compared to 10,346 for the previous quarter and 11,714 for the same quarter ending June 2021.
  • 9,430 children and young people were referred to CAMHS in Scotland for quarter ending June 2022. This compares to 9,548 for the previous quarter and 10,193 for the same quarter ending June 2021

Percentage of patients who started treatment in CAMHS within 18 weeks of referral, by quarter for March 2017 - June 2022

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 06 December 2022.

General enquiries

If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please email phs.camh@phs.scot.

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Older versions of this publication

Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.

Last updated: 21 March 2024
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