The majority (85%) of the people who use Restore have severe and enduring mental health problems.
Mental health in Oxfordshire
One in five people receiving benefits in Oxfordshire are on benefits for a reason directly related to their mental health.
Oxford City is in the top five worst performing districts in England, with 54% of people on incapacity benefit / severe disability allowance for reasons relating to mental health problems.
Less than 25% of disabled people with mental health problems are in employment, which is half the employment rate for all disabled people.
Employment and mental health
People with mental health problems in employment have fewer psychiatric symptoms and better physical health. Being in employment does not have a detrimental effect on clinical wellbeing and does not increase the risk of relapse.
People who become ill with a mental health problem are twice as likely to leave work than people who have a different health issue. All workplaces are affected by mental ill health in their workforce. In the UK one in six employees experience depression, anxiety or problems relating to stress (Sainsbury Centre, 2007a).
The total cost of mental ill health to the economy is estimated at £40 billion per year and around 63 million working days are lost each year due to mental ill-health.
Although the majority of working-age people with mental health problems are in paid employment, mental ill health remains an important cause of work-related disability. For example, 40% of new claimants of Incapacity Benefit (a social security benefit for people unable to work because of illness or disability) have a mental health problem (Oxford Economics, 2007).
People who claim Incapacity Benefit for the first time typically expect to return to work. However according to research a person who is off work for six months has only a 50% chance of ever working again (Sainsbury Centre & College of Occupational Therapists, 2008). If a person is off work for two years the chances of returning to work decline even further: people in this situation are more likely to retire than return to work (Waddell & Burton, 2006).