FOI 26-252 Mental Health Calls
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-252 Mental Health Calls
- Request Date
- 01 Jul 2026
- Response Date
- 22 Jul 2026
- Information Requested
Please can you provide the following data:
- Total mental health related 999 calls Please provide the total number of mental health related 999 calls received by the Scottish Ambulance Service for the full calendar years 2024 and 2025 (or the most recent full year available for 2025).
Where possible, please break this down by:
- Chief Complaint 25 – Psychiatric / Mental Health coding
- Any broader “mental health flagged” or mental health related attendances
- Use of the Mental Health Pathway / warm transfers to NHS 24 Mental Health Hub For the same years (2024 and 2025), please provide the number of mental health related 999 calls in which the Mental Health Pathway was utilised, resulting in the call being directed / warm transferred to the NHS 24 Mental Health Hub. Please include any available breakdown by month/quarter and any notes on how these calls are recorded or coded.
- Criteria for directing calls to the NHS 24 Mental Health Hub Please provide details of the current criteria, risk assessment process, call-handler guidance, or protocols used to determine whether a mental health related 999 call is suitable for warm transfer to the NHS 24 Mental Health Hub versus requiring a Scottish Ambulance Service response.
If this is documented in an internal protocol, flowchart, or guideline, please provide a copy or detailed summary.
- NHS 24 referrals / transfers to SAS closed as Code 25 / Mental Health Please provide the number of calls/referrals received by SAS from NHS 24 that were subsequently closed by SAS as Code 25 (Psychiatric/Mental Health) for 2024 and 2025. Where this data is held, please also provide: • The number (and percentage) of these calls that resulted in conveyance to hospital (or other conveyance destination).
Following clarification about point 4, you confirmed that this should be:
incidents received from NHS24 which are classed in our call triage system (C3) as mental health related. This includes incidents which are attended and not attended but may be limited in the definition we can use for 'mental health'. This would be a subset of the data provided in Q1.
Thank you for the clarification on that point.
- Response
The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) has provided the requested information within the attached spreadsheet.
To support interpretation of the data, we have set out below an explanation of how the information has been compiled and the limitations that apply.
Important information to consider when interpreting this data
The attached spreadsheet includes data from our Command and Control System(C3).
The data is limited to potential mental health related incidents identified through our despatch codes or call stopped codes. It does not capture all incidents where mental health may be a secondary or contributing factor.
Q1 Please see attached the information included in the spreadsheet tab “Q1”. This shows the number of incidents received by SAS which were identified as possible mental health related incidents at the time of call.
Please note: These criteria are limited to identification through despatch codes and call stopped codes. This limitation means some calls will be identified in this data who are subsequently not deemed to be mental health related, conversely there will likely be mental health calls which fall into other triage codes which have not been identified due the broad categories of these codes (e.g. falls, overdose etc).
This information has been split by the incidents which have been triaged with the chief complaint of “25 – psychiatric” and those who have a different chief complaint. The increase in ‘Other Chief Complaint’ incidents from April 2025 is attributed to the introduction of a dedicated link from the Mental Health Hub to SAS.
Q2 Please see the attached the information included in the spreadsheet tab “Q2”. This shows a subset of the incidents identified in Q1 which were managed at the point of call (i.e. not attended by a SAS crew). This is split into 2 further subsets, those who were signposted to NHS24 and those who were warm transferred to NHS24.
Q3 A redacted copy of the relevant pathway guidance document has been provided. In summary, patients may be considered suitable for transfer where:
- The presentation relates to mental ill health or distress
- The patient is a first-party caller, consents, and is willing to engage
Patients are not transferred where:
- There is a need for emergency clinical treatment
- There is an acute medical issue (e.g. overdose requiring treatment)
- The individual does not wish to engage
All decisions are supported by clinical triage, risk assessment, and trained clinicians, and where transfer is not appropriate, care remains with SAS. Limited information in this document has been withheld under section 38(1)(b) (personal data), relating to identifiable staff details.
Q4 Please see the attached the information included in the spreadsheet tab “Q4”. This shows a subset of the incidents identified in Q1 which were identified as being received by NHS24. This is split into 2 further subsets, those who were attended and, a further subset of this, those who were attended and conveyed.
Please note: the increase in incidents from April 2025 is attributed to the introduction of a dedicated link from the Mental Health Hub to SAS.
For the given data, you will see that some of the figures are shown as, five or less than five, please note that this figure has been suppressed because the statistical value is less than five and greater that zero. The Scottish Ambulance service has a duty, under the Data Protection Act to avoid directly or indirectly revealing any personal details. It is therefore widely understood that provision of statistics on small numbers, five or less are statistically suppressed upon disclosure.
- Response Documents
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NHS24 MHH Pathway Practice Guideline Redacted (2) (PDF | 211KB)
