The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published the Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2024. 

The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2024 presents information on: 

The number of practising MHOs in post at 2nd December 2024, 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 765 active MHO posts in 2024, which is 36 more than the 729 in 2023. This is the highest number since records began in 2005.
• The number of individuals (headcount) working as an MHO rose from 697 in 2023 to 729 in 2024.
  
• The overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week in 2024 was 13,880 the highest since 2016 when we started reporting this figure, the previous highest was in 2023 when it was 13,149.
• Since December 2020 there has been a rise of 19.5 percent of the hours worked by MHOs.
• Between 2023 and 2024 there was a rise of 731 hours (5.6%) in the overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week.
• Active exclusive MHO posts rose by 27 (9%), cover posts by 6 (10.3%), and non-exclusive posts by 3 (0.8%).
• Reported shortfall decreased by 497 hours per week (17.1%) from 2,914 to 2,417 hours per week.
• Between December 2023 and December 2024, 76 staff left 78 MHO posts.

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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

Time Series

The  Mental Health Officer time series data section of the data website can be found here. This will be updated in September 2025 with the 2024 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.