Abstract

In the UK the largest cause of long term occupational disability is mental disorders. Closing the disability employment gap has become a focus for recent UK government social policy initiatives, as those being disabled are 32% less likely to be in employment compared to non-disabled people. Long-term sickness absence is associated with social exclusion, poorer health outcomes and increased mortality. Despite the extensive costs to society and the large number of people adversely affected by this issue, surprisingly little is known about the underlying health reasons for the receipt of benefits and the effectiveness of interventions to support people’s return to work. We will describe a novel study that will accelerate our understanding about the dynamics between welfare, benefits and occupational needs of patients presenting with a mental health disorder. This will be done by linking and analysing the Department for Work and Pension data with the South London Maudsley mental health electronic data resulting in the largest clinical cohort of adults (n=380,000) referred to psychiatric services in the UK. The challenges and opportunities accompanying a data linkage project on such a substantial scale will be explored, a description of the linked data will be given and an overview of work currently being conducted.