Mental health problems affect millions of people in the UK, but understanding their wider impact on employment and earnings has been challenging.
The NHS Talking Therapies programme has been designed to treat depression and anxiety disorders. As well as improving people’s mental health, it can also help to improve their employment and wages.
At the Office for National Statistics (ONS), we used the power of linked data to produce national-scale evidence, revealing the impact of the NHS Talking Therapies programme on people’s working lives in England. Using de-identified linked health and non-health data we could see the effect of the NHS Talking Therapies programme on employment status and earnings. This study forms part of a groundbreaking programme of analysis examining how different health conditions and interventions affect people’s work and earnings.
Showing the benefits of mental health services
One in four people experience mental health problems each year, with anxiety and depression being the most common conditions. While we know these conditions can affect people’s ability to work, we’ve not previously measured the long-term economic impact of mental health treatment on employment and earnings in England.
Policymakers need evidence to understand whether investing in mental health programmes like NHS Talking Therapies delivers benefits beyond individual wellbeing.
Linking data to find answers
We combined several major datasets to find out how mental health treatment affects the working lives of different people. This included:
- NHS Talking Therapies records for 842,000 people who received treatment between 2014 and 2022
- employment and earnings data from HM Revenue and Customs between 2014 and 2022
- 2011 census data to understand people’s backgrounds and circumstances
- death registration data to account for people who died during the study period
This was the first time we’d linked these datasets to examine the employment effects of mental health talking therapy treatment. We de-identified all the datasets to protect privacy while also allowing statistical analysis so that the insight can be used to inform policy.
Why this matters for people’s mental health
The findings show that the NHS Talking Therapies programme delivers measurable economic benefits alongside better mental health. People who completed treatment saw their monthly earnings increase by an average of up to £17 compared to before treatment, with effects lasting for years. The chance of being in paid employment increased by 1.5 percentage points up to seven years after treatment.
The benefits were particularly strong for people who were unemployed when they started therapy. Their earnings increased by up to £63 per month, and the chance of being in paid employment increased by 3.1 percentage points four years after completing treatment.
These findings show that access to mental health services may also benefit society more broadly.
Improving mental health services and policies
This study may help policymakers make informed decisions about funding mental health programmes and demonstrates the impact of preventive healthcare.
Healthcare commissioners and local authorities could use this evidence to make the case for continued and increased investment in mental health programmes.
Healthcare providers could use the findings to demonstrate the wider value of their services to patients. This could help to show mental health treatments as a pathway back to fulfilling work and better pay.
This study is also part of a wider ONS programme examining the employment effects of healthcare interventions. Similar analyses of bariatric surgery, endometriosis diagnosis, and musculo-skeletal treatments have also been published. These studies show how linking different datasets can answer important questions about public services that would otherwise be impossible to investigate.
To find out more, read The impact of NHS Talking Therapies on monthly employee pay and employment status, England: April 2014 to December 2022.
This project was funded by the UK Government's Labour Markets Evaluation and Pilots Fund - 2024 to 2025.