The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published the Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2021.

The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2021 presents information on:

• The number of practising MHOs in post at 6 December 2021, excluding long-term absentees.
• MHO trainees, leavers, vacancies and staffing shortfalls.
• Key characteristics of the MHO workforce (e.g. age) and the type of teams they work in.

The key points from this year’s MHO report are set out below.

• There were 694 filled MHO posts in 2021, which is 10 fewer than the 704 in 2020.
• The number of individuals working as an MHO fell from 677 in 2020 to 660 in 2021.
• The overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week in 2021 saw a very slight rise from 2020.
• A small fall was seen in the estimated average time spent by MHOs in mental health teams on MHO work whereas an increase was seen in the estimated average time spent by MHOs from non-mental health teams.
• Filled exclusive MHO posts rose by one (less than half a percent), the filled cover MHO posts rose by 13 (24.5%) and there was a fall of 24 non-exclusive posts (5.7%). The overall fall in MHO posts was 10 (1.4%).
• Between December 2020 and December 2021 95 staff left 95 MHO posts, this is one more than the high of 94 between December 2018 and December 2019.
• There was an increase in the number of authorities reporting an estimated shortfall in MHOs along with an increase in the total number of weekly additional hours estimated to be required.
• There is a long-term trend which has been seen since records began in 2005 of increasing proportions of MHOs located in mental health teams and reducing proportions in non-mental health teams. Almost two-thirds of MHOs are now based in MHTs compared to roughly two-fifths in 2005.

 Download (PDF,1.04MB) 

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

Data Tables and blank Survey Template

The  Mental Health Officer time series data section of the data website can be found 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 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 2020. Please note that this illustrative blank template is in normal Excel 365 format (.xlsx); the real template used by local authorities was a macro-enabled worksheet (.xlsm).

If you have any enquiries about this report or any of the associated tables, please contact:

Zara Gall
Tel: 01382 723657
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 
Tables from The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2021