Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2023

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27 Aug 2024

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published the Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2023. 

The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2023 presents information on: 

The number of practising MHOs in post at 5 December 2023, 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 729 active MHO posts in 2023, which is 22 more than the 707 in 2022.
  • The number of individuals (headcount) working as an MHO rose from 670 in 2022 to 697 in 2023
  • The overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week in 2023 was 13,149 the highest since 2016 when we started reporting this figure, the previous highest was in 2022 when it was 12,752.
  • Between 2022 and 2023 there was a rise of 3.1% in the overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week.
  • Active exclusive MHO posts rose by 17 (6.4%), and cover posts by 13 (28.9%) whereas there was a fall of 8 in non-exclusive posts (2.0%).
  • Reported shortfall increased by 11.8% from 2,606 to 2,914 hours per week.
  • Between December 2022 and December 2023, 98 staff left 100 MHO posts.

 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.

Tables from The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2023

Description File Type File size (KB)   
All 2023 Tables   xlsx 84 Download

Time Series

The  Mental Health Officer time series data section of the data website can be found here. This will be updated in September 2024 with the 2023 MHO data. This means the latest data can be viewed as part of the full time series data, some of which goes back to 2005.

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.