Monitoring the Mental Health Act in 2012/13

This is CQC’s fourth annual report on our statutory monitoring of the use of the Mental Health Act (MHA).

In 2012/13 people were detained or treated under the MHA more than 50,000 times and community

treatment orders were imposed more than 4,600 times. The total number of people who are subject to the MHA has risen by 12% in the last five years, with 17,000 people detained at the end of 2012/13.

The ambition of national policy is to give mental health ‘parity of esteem’ with physical health within the health and social care system. The implementation framework for the Government’s strategy No Health without Mental Health underlines the importance of providing equal access to age appropriate services for everyone. The framework emphasises the interconnected nature of physical and mental health. It focuses on improving outcomes, quality and value for money, and making sure that people who use mental health services, their families and carers, are fully involved in all parts of mental health services, contributing to the goal of “no decision about me, without me”.

In our publication A fresh start for the regulation and inspection of mental health services, we have set out our own aims to strengthen our regulation of mental health services and to integrate our work under the Mental Health Act through our new approach to inspecting and monitoring specialist mental health services.

To read the report use the download link above