Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment his Department has made of the potential benefits of adult education courses for people with mental health problems.

There is evidence that adult education courses can have positive benefits for people with mental health problems:

• A 2012 LSE study^[1] reported health and wellbeing benefits associated with adult learning, with reductions in self-reported depression, improvements in life satisfaction, enhanced perceptions of self-worth, improvements in self-reported overall health and increased desire to find a better job.
• An Institute of Education study^[2] found that interest-related learning had the effect of increasing women’s life satisfaction and decreasing female depression, as well as having a positive effect on self-efficacy.
• In 2010, Northamptonshire County Council Adult Learning Service and the local Teaching Primary Care Trust developed community adult education courses for people with mild to moderate depression and anxiety. The project was evaluated over a three year period by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF)^[3]. The evaluation found that the adult education courses offered a simple, low-cost way of helping to reduce the symptoms of mild to moderate depression and anxiety.

To test this evidence more rigorously, the 2014 Autumn Statement announced new funding to pilot adult education courses targeted at adults with mild to moderate mental health problems. Adult education providers are developing courses in partnership with local mental health organisations. The project is being advised by a cross-government steering group which includes senior officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Health, Public Health England, NHS England and the Department for Work and Pensions.

A consortium led by Ipsos-MORI is undertaking an external evaluation and gathering anonymised evidence about participants’ progress in relation to anxiety, depression and wellbeing. Pilots are using the same standardised and validated assessment scores as used by the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. For more information, including a map of the projects, go to: http://mhfe.org.uk/clmh-pilots/.

[1] Review and update of research into the wider benefits of adult learning (LSE) 2012

[2] The relationship between adult learning and wellbeing: Evidence from the 1958 National Child Development Study (Institute of Education), 2012

[3] Robotham : Learning for Life: adult learning, mental health and wellbeing (Mental Health Foundation), 2011