Psychological therapies waiting times
Quarter ending September 2022
An Official Statistics publication for Scotland
- Published
- 06 December 2022
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an update on how long people waited to start treatment with psychological therapies provided by NHS Scotland for the quarter ending September 2022. As of June 2022, psychological therapies data is available via an interactive dashboard.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 September 2022:
- 80.7% of people started their treatment within 18 weeks of referral, compared to 81.4% of people for the previous quarter, and 87.4% of people for the quarter ending September 2021. The Scottish Government standard states that 90% of people should start their treatment within 18 weeks of referral to psychological therapies.
- 50% of the people starting treatment started within 3 weeks of referral.
Percentage of patients who started psychological therapy treatment within 18 weeks of referral, quarterly March 2018 - September 2022, NHS Scotland
- 18,027 people started psychological therapies treatment in NHS Boards and NHS 24 in the quarter ending September 2022. This is a decrease of 6.9% (1,341) from the previous quarter and a decrease of 1.5% (274) from the quarter ending September 2021.
- 1,263 people aged 65+ years started treatment with psychological therapies in this quarter. 81.2% started their treatment within 18 weeks of referral, a decrease from both 82.5% in the previous quarter and 91.8% for the quarter ending September 2021.
- A total of 38,192 people were referred for psychological therapies (and in some cases further adult mental health services) in Scotland in this quarter (see the Data Quality Document). This is a 2.8% (1,088) decrease from the 39,280 people referred in the previous quarter and a 5.7% (2,291) decrease from the same quarter ending September 2021 (40,483 referrals).
Background
Waiting times information for psychological therapies is still being developed. NHS Boards are working with PHS and the Scottish Government to improve the consistency and completeness of the information.
Psychological therapies refer to a range of interventions, based on psychological concepts and theory, which are designed to help people understand and make changes to their thinking, behaviour and relationships in order to relieve distress and to improve functioning. The standard applies specifically to psychological therapies for treatment of a mental illness or disorder.
Further information
The next release of this publication will be 07 March 2023.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please email phs.psychtherapies@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.