The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) has published updated statistics on substance misuse and mental health issues, adding three new hospital admission indicators to the existing data profile available through the Fingertips tool.

The September 2025 update to the Co-occurring Substance Misuse and Mental Health Issues profile includes routine updates to existing indicators alongside the addition of these new measures, which NHS England previously published.

Three New Hospital Admission Indicators

The newly added indicators focus on different aspects of drug-related mental health hospital admissions. The first indicator tracks hospital admissions for drug-related mental and behavioural disorders, specifically covering cases where this condition served as the primary diagnosis for the admission.

The second indicator measures hospital admissions for poisoning by drug misuse, including both intentional and unintentional poisoning involving drugs that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 controls.

The third indicator provides a broader measure of hospital admissions where drug-related mental and behavioural disorders played a factor. This includes both primary and secondary diagnoses, though a secondary diagnosis does not necessarily mean that drug-related mental and behavioural disorders contributed to the admission.

Data Accessibility and Geographic Coverage

OHID has now incorporated these drug-related mental health hospital admissions indicators into the Fingertips tool, which organises public health data into themed profiles. The indicators include both numbers of admissions and directly age-standardised rates per 100,000 population to enable comparison across local areas and over time.

Each indicator presents data by age group and sex at national level and for various geographic areas including upper tier local authority, region, combined authority, and NHS integrated care board. The system also breaks down the data by Index of Multiple Deprivation deciles, ranking areas from most deprived (decile 1) to least deprived (decile 10).

Continuation of Previous Data Series

NHS Digital previously published the indicators in their Statistics on drug misuse series until the 2020 report, which they published in January 2021. Following NHS Digital’s integration into NHS England in February 2023, NHS England continued publishing the data as part of their Statistics on public health series.

OHID worked closely with NHS England to replicate their methodology, ensuring continuity and comparability with the earlier data series. This methodological consistency maintains the integrity of trend analysis over time.

Supporting Local Planning and Benchmarking

According to OHID, the data in this profile supports planners, service providers and stakeholders to understand substance misuse and co-occurring mental health issues at their local level and profile their area against similar populations.

The inclusion of these drug-related mental health hospital admissions indicators in the Fingertips tool ensures the data remains available and helps local areas monitor drug-related harms using official hospital data. The Fingertips platform provides access to information on a range of public health topics through various profiles and indicators.

All three indicators focus specifically on hospital admissions for inpatient settings only and present official statistics that apply to England.

Source: dbrecoveryresources