The Minister for Health has said that current waiting times for children and adult mental health services are “unacceptable” across Northern Ireland.
Speaking to a question posed by MLA for Newry and Armagh, Justin McNulty, Minister Nesbitt said the situation has arisen due to several factors, including “higher prevalence rates in NI linked to deprivation and legacy issues, covid, increased levels of acuity and funding that falls short of objectively assessed need”.
To remedy the issues, the Minister said he is “committed to addressing this, subject to available funding”.
SDLP MLA McNulty asked the Minister to detail the average waiting list time for mental health services, broken down by Health and Social Care Trust.
However, due to the recent migration of all Trust to a new digital patient record system, Encompass the data is at various stages of reconciliation and validation.
Said Minister Nesbitt: “Due to this process, some Trusts have been unable to confirm and validate with confidence their current waiting list data, making regional comparisons difficult.”
In regards to all data outlined below, the Minister explains the Trusts are continuing to validate and reconcile their data following the migration to Encompass and, as such, the average wait time for a routine new patient adult mental health assessment “cannot be confirmed due to the current low confidence in data validation and therefore may not be a true reflection”.
For the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (BHSCT) the average wait for Step Two in Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) assessment is five weeks which extends to 12 weeks for Step Three assessment.
Drug and Alcohol Misuse waiting times within BHSCT is five weeks, Eating Disorders takes two weeks, Family Trauma (Regional) is an average of 23 weeks, Youth Justice with CAMHS is four weeks and longest of all is Knowing our Identity referral which takes an average of 80 weeks.
The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust provides CAMHS services for the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust and so, the average waiting list times for CAMHS services are therefore detailed above.
For the Southern Health and Social Care Trust (SHSCT) the average waiting time for new patients to Adult Community Mental Health Services – including Dementia – as of April 2025 was 78 days.
CAMHS service referrals for those seeking support with Eating Disorders and from Step One to Four of CAMHS support totalled 202 individuals of which 109 were waiting between zero and three weeks.
Within the Western Health and Social Care Trust (WHSCT) Adult Mental Health Services the waiting list for Primary Care Mental Health Team is 14 days, Forensics is 48 days and Eating Disorder Services is 30 days.
All new mental health referrals for over 65s are seen within the 9-week regional target within WHSCT.
As of September 15, 2025, there are 339 young people on the Primary Mental Health and Step Three CAMHS waiting list for an initial CHOICE assessment.
This equates to a 100 – day average waiting time for assessment.
Young people referred to WHSCT CAMHS Crisis Team, receive their assessment within the recommended time frame for emergency and urgent assessments.
Young People referred to WHSCT CAMHS Eating Disorder Team or Drugs and Alcohol Team receive their assessment within the recommended time frames of nine weeks. There are no current breeches.
