Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people with long-term mental health conditions that have become unemployed in each of the last three years.

The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

An estimate of the number of people with a long-term mental health condition who leave employment each year, regardless of whether they became unemployed, is available from the 2017 report Thriving at Work: a review of mental health and employers, an independent review of mental health and employers by Lord Dennis Stevenson and Paul Farmer. This report estimated that there were around 300,000 such moves in the year 2016-17 in the UK

Notes:

1. This estimate was based on quarterly estimates from the two-wave longitudinal Labour Force Survey (LFS) between Q2 2016 and Q2 2017.
2. Each individual in the data is measured at two snapshot interviews, one quarter apart. The estimate identifies people who were in employment in the first interview, but not in employment in the second interview. The data does not capture any movements before or after this quarterly period, or any short-term moves that may have been reversed between the two snapshot interviews. It should however give a broad measure of the degree of ‘churn’.
3. The estimate does not capture the reason each individual left employment, which may or may not have been related to their health condition.
4. The annual estimate may double-count an individual if they have left employment twice in the same year.
5. As this analysis is based on longitudinal survey data, the precision and accuracy of the estimate can be affected by response errors, sampling errors and attrition bias.
6. The estimate covers people who reported the same health condition in both quarters, and remained in the 16-64 age group.
7. Employment is defined according to National Statistics definitions, as used in the ONS’s monthly Labour Market Overview release, in line with internationally-agreed (ILO) guidelines.
8. A long-term health condition is defined as a physical or mental health condition or illness lasting or expected to last 12 months or more, in line with Government Statistical Service (GSS) Harmonised Principles. This includes those who are disabled (who report that their condition or illness reduces their ability to carry out day-to-day activities) and those who are not disabled.
9. Mental health conditions are defined as any condition reported by survey respondents under the categories “depression, bad nerves or anxiety” or “mental illness, phobias, panics or other nervous disorders”. People who report a long-term health condition but do not specify the type are excluded from this analysis.

Further details are available from the report at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/thriving-at-work-a-review-of-mental-health-and-employers