Children and young people mental health indicators

Our Children and Young People Mental Health Indicators work aims to support effective action to improve public mental health. 

In 2025, we published national and local trend data for the indicators in the mental health profile for children and young people and will update the data regularly.

View the mental health profile for children and young people

Developing the mental health indicator set for children and young people 

We developed this indicator set with input from topic experts and a focus group with children and young people, using existing literature and high-level evidence as a starting point.  

Resources from the development work: 

• The indicator set, including notes on data sources (published in 2022)
• The construct rationale document explains the reasoning for the themes (‘constructs’) covered in the indicator set (published in 2022)
• A report from the focus group with children and young people was published by YoungScot in 2021

The resulting set of 70 mental health indicators for children and young people helps users to identify important information, at local and national levels, about mental health outcomes and their determinants. 

In developing the indicator set, we identified important aspects of children's and young people’s mental health that are currently not measurable. Fourteen of the 70 indicators require further work to agree on a measurable definition and identify or develop a data source.  

Previous work on the children and young people’s mental health indicator set, including detailed analytical reports on the data, are available: 

• Archived web pages document the initial work by NHS Health Scotland. 
• Trends and equalities analyses for the then 73 indicators (report by NHS Health Scotland and ScotPHO, 2013)