# NHS England mental health datasets
>Last modified: 20 Mar 2026
<div style="background-color: rgba(0, 178, 169, 0.3); padding: 5px; border-radius: 5px;"><strong>The mental health datasets cover inpatient and community mental health services.</strong></div>
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<aside class="admonition danger"><p class="admonition-title">NHS England mental health datasets are widely acknowledged to be complex and poorly documented</p>Researchers should be aware of the limitations of these datasets and use them carefully in their analyses.</aside>

>## Summary:
>* UK LLC holds **two NHS England mental health datasets**: [**Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS)**](../mental_health_datasets/mhsds/mhsds.ipynb) and [**Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Dataset (IAPT)**](../mental_health_datasets/iapt/iapt.ipynb).
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>* **MHSDS** represents **secondary care** services that record data after a referral is made to a specialist mental health team. These services support individuals with severe or complex mental health conditions such as psychosis, bipolar disorder, gambling, eating disorders and learning disabilities.
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>* **IAPT** covers **primary care** services designed to help people with mild to moderate mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression – please see our detailed [**Understanding IAPT guide**](../mental_health_datasets/iapt/understanding_iapt.md). 
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>* MHSDS is primarily a dataset for **administrative purposes**. It is comprised of approximately **60 datasets** and is particularly **complex**. UK LLC is collaborating with experts within the community to improve documentation for researchers – please see our detailed [**Understanding MHSDS guide**](../mental_health_datasets/mhsds/understanding_mhsds.md).
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>* The MHSDS and IAPT datasets are increasingly using **clinical terminology** to capture clinical information, primarily through SNOMED-CT. See the [**Coded variables guide**](../coding/coding_intro.md) for further details.
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## Overview of mental health datasets
For further information see the **individual dataset guides.**

**Table 1** Names, geographical coverage and availability of mental health datasets in the UK LLC TRE

| **Dataset**|**Dataset name**|**Other name**|**Grouping**|**Coverage**|**Data available in TRE**|
|---|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|
|[**MHSDS**<sup>1</sup>](../mental_health_datasets/mhsds/mhsds.ipynb)|Mental Health Services Data Set|N/A|General|England|01/04/2016 onwards|
|[**IAPT**](../mental_health_datasets/iapt/iapt.ipynb)|Improving Access to Psychological Therapies|NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression|Talking therapies|England|01/04/2012 onwards| |

<sup>1</sup>MHSDS has two precursor datasets, the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Data Set (MHLDDS) and the Mental Health Minimum Data Set (MHMDS), which were retired in 2016 and 2015, respectively. Only the MHSDS is currently available in the UK LLC TRE.