Background: Recovery Colleges offer educational courses about recovery and mental health which are co-produced by mental health professionals and experts by lived experience. Previous evaluations have found positive effects of Recovery Colleges on a range of outcomes including wellbeing, recovery and quality of life.
Aims: To evaluate service use outcomes for Sussex Recovery College students who use mental health services.
Method: The study used a controlled-before-and-after design. It used archival data to analyse service use before and after participants registered with the Recovery College (n = 463). Participants acted as their own control.
Results: Students used mental health services less after attending the Recovery College than before. Students who attended the Recovery College showed significant reductions in occupied hospital bed days, admissions, admissions under section and community contacts in the 18 months post compared with the 18 months before registering. Reductions in service use were greater for those who completed a course than those who registered but did not complete a course.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that attending Recovery College courses is associated with reduced service use. The reductions equate to non-cashable cost-savings of £1200 per registered student and £1760 for students who completed a course. Further research is needed to investigate causality.
Keywords: Recovery; Recovery College; evaluation; service use.