Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) waiting times
Quarter ending March 2025
Accredited official statistics
- Published
- 03 June 2025 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an update of how long children and young people waited to start treatment with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in NHSScotland for the quarter ending March 2025.
CAMHS are multi-disciplinary teams that provide treatment and/or interventions for children and young people experiencing mental health problems. Note that where a child or young person is waiting on an assessment for a neurodevelopmental (ND) condition, such as autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), they may not meet the national referral criteria as set out in the CAMHS national service specification, and therefore will not be counted in these statistics. PHS is commissioned to collect information on CAMHS, excluding ND pathway activity.
Please see the neurodevelopmental activity section of the data quality document, and the national neurodevelopmental specification: principles and standards of care for more information.
This publication presents the Accredited Official Statistics derived from the aggregate national data collection on CAMHS waiting times. Due to the ongoing data quality and completeness issues, these data should not be compared to the developing CAMHS data presented in the statistics in development patient level Child, Adolescent, and Psychological Therapies National Dataset (CAPTND).
Main points
For the quarter ending March 2025:
- 91.6% of people started treatment within 18 weeks of referral, which is an increase from 90.6% for the previous quarter and from 86.0% for the same quarter ending March 2024. The Scottish Government standard states that 90% of children and young people should start treatment within 18 weeks of referral to CAMHS. The chart below illustrates performance in relation to this target over the past 4 years and shows that the target was first achieved in quarter ending December 2024.
- 3,790 people started treatment in CAMHS. This is a 0.6% decrease from the 3,812 starting treatment in the previous quarter, and a 6.6% decrease from the 4,056 starting treatment in the quarter ending March 2024.
- 50% of those starting treatment started within 5 weeks of referral, which is an increase from 4 weeks the previous quarter and a decrease from 6 weeks for quarter ending March 2024.
- 4,674 children and young people were on a waiting list to start treatment in CAMHS at quarter ending March 2025 which is an increase of 7.0% (305) compared to 4,369 in the previous quarter, and a decrease of 15.9% (884) from 5,558 waiting in the same quarter ending March 2024. The total waiting for CAMHS does not include those on a neurodevelopmental (ND) pathway waiting list.
- A total of 8,895 children and young people were referred to CAMHS in the quarter ending March 2025. This is a 0.03% (3) decrease from 8,898 compared to the previous quarter, and a decrease of 5.4% (505) from 9,400 referred in the same quarter ending March 2024.
Further information
The next release of this publication will be 2 September 2025.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact Brendan de Moor at phs.camh@phs.scot.
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Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.