About this release

This publication by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents information on patients who have been cared for as inpatients or day cases in mental health facilities of Scottish hospitals. Specifically it presents information where a patient’s case of care was recorded as including a diagnosis of a learning disability or autism or was within the Learning Disability treatment speciality and where that patient died during their period of care. This information is presented by financial year, from 2015/16 to the most recently available data, a partial year for 2021/22 to 31 December 2021. Note that the patient's diagnosis of or treatment for learning disabilities or autism may have no bearing on the patient's cause of death.

Further information

For more information on patients with learning disabilities who were treated in Scottish psychiatric hospitals, see the PHS learning disability inpatient report.

This information has been requested from PHS by the Scottish Government following a Parliamentary Request – S6W-05166. These data are held by PHS but the analysis is not routinely produced and published, and therefore was unavailable to support a Parliamentary Question response. This is now being released into the public domain through PHS’s normal publication procedures. This release has been pre-announced by PHS through normal forthcoming publications information, but with a reduced pre-announcement period and produced as a 'rapid release' to meet the request for information.

General enquiries

If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please email phs.mentalhealth@phs.scot.

Media enquiries

If you have a media enquiry relating to this publication, please contact the Communications and Engagement team.

Requesting other formats and reporting issues

If you require publications or documents in other formats, please email phs.otherformats@phs.scot.

To report any issues with a publication, please email phs.generalpublications@phs.scot.

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.

Last updated: 21 March 2024
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