Health and Care Experience Survey 2023/24: Mental Health Analysis

Data and Methodology

This report uses data from the Health and Care experience Survey 2023/24. This survey was sent to a random sample of people who were registered with a General Practice in Scotland, lived in Scotland, and were aged 17 and over on 25 September 2023. More information on the survey is available at the Health and Care experience Survey 2023/24 National Report.

This analysis explores data on people who have mental health conditions or who have sought care for mental health reasons in the 12 months prior to the survey. It does so by comparing how different groups of respondents answered survey questions related to their experience of General Practice and out of hours services, and their personal characteristics.

We have identified distinct groups of respondents, according to the following information:

• What treatment or advice people received the last time they contacted their General Practice in the previous 12 months. People could select ‘a mental health problem’ and/or other issues, or no treatment or advice received
• What main treatment, assessment or advice people received the last time they sought out of hours care in the previous 12 months. People could select ‘a mental health problem’ or other issues
• Long lasting conditions. People could select ‘a mental health condition’ and/or other conditions, or no conditions

Throughout this report the survey results related to the experience of General Practice and out of hours services are presented as weighted average percentages. This is because weighting the results provides results which are more representative of the population of Scotland as a whole.

We do not apply weights to data on personal characteristics. The survey is not designed to estimate these characteristics in the wider population. This information is provided as background information on the survey response and should not be interpreted as providing an estimate of the proportions of these characteristics in the wider population.

For comparison with the wider population, 11% of people who responded to the survey have a mental health condition. This is in line with Scotland’s Census, which estimated that, in 2022, 11% of the population had a mental health condition.

More information about the weighting methodology is available in the Health and Social Care Experience survey 2023/24 Technical Report.