The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published the Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2018.

This report carries National Statistics designation and is the seventh statistical report on Mental Health Officers (MHOs) in Scotland to be produced by the SSSC.

The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2018 presents information on:

• the number of practising MHOs in post at 3 December 2018, excluding long-term absentees
• MHO trainees, leavers, vacancies and staffing shortfalls
• some key aspects of the work carried out by MHOs in Scotland.

Key points from the report are set out below:

• There were 730 filled MHO posts in 2018.

• 84 people left 87 MHO posts during 2018, with 32 of these post holders resigning (over a third of all leavers in 2018).

• There were 13 fewer filled MHO posts in 2018 than in 2017 which is equivalent to a drop of 1.7%.

• More local authorities are reporting an MHO shortfall with 24 from 32 reporting a shortfall.

• The average reported (mean) shortfall was 81.9 hours per week for each local authority that reported one. This is equivalent to 55 full time MHOs across those authorities.

• Local authorities across Scotland reported a total of 22 unfilled exclusive MHO vacancies with 18 MHOs currently unavailable. This is an increase of eight vacancies and five more unavailable MHOs from our 2017 figures of 14 and 13 respectively.

• An increasing proportion of the MHO workforce is aged over 55. In 2014 it was 32% of MHOs, in 2018 this figure had risen to 38%. The average (mean) age of all MHOs is 50. There has also been an increase in MHOs under 40 from 13% in 2014 to 18% in 2018. Correspondingly the percentage of MHOs who fall between these ranges (ages 40 to 54) has decreased.

• The downward trend in the average weekly hours worked per post is continuing. This figure was 17.2 in 2016, 16.1 in 2017 and it decreased further in 2018 to 15.7.

• Since 2016 the number of cover MHOs has decreased. In 2016 there were 99, 76 in 2017 and 71 in 2018.

Download (PDF, 631KB) 

As a National Statistics product, this publication complies with The Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008. The list of people who have pre-release access can be found here.

Data Tables and Charts, and blank Survey Template

Copies of the individual tables and charts in the latest report will to be provided below later this week .

The  Mental Health Officer time series data section of the data website is available here. This means the latest data can be viewed as part of the full time series data, some of which goes back to 2005. The tables and charts are available for download in Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) format, and the data tables in non-proprietary Comma Separated Values (CSV) format, individually and together in a compressed ZIP file. The provision of the data in these formats is intended to facilitate its analysis and re-use. Below you can download the blank survey template used by survey respondents to submit their data for December 2018. Please note that this illustrative blank template is in normal Excel 2010 format (.xlsx); the real template used by local authorities was a macro-enabled worksheet (.xlsm).

Tables and charts from The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2018