The impact of Individual Placement and Support on employment, health and social outcomes: quasi-experimental evidence from Aotearoa New Zealand.

Abstract

Aim: To examine the impact of integrated employment support and mental health treatment (Individual Placement and Support, or "IPS") on Aotearoa New Zealand participants' employment, income, health, education and justice outcomes.

Method: De-identified linked data from the Stats NZ Integrated Data Infrastructure and propensity score matching were used to estimate effects.

Results: In total, 1,659 IPS participants were matched to 1,503 non-participants. Compared with matched non-participants, matched participants were 1.6 times more likely to be in employment at 12 months. Over 3 years, matched IPS participants had more earnings, more time in employment, greater total income and were more likely to gain qualifications. They also had more face-to-face contacts with mental health teams, mental health-related inpatient stays and mental health service crisis contacts than matched non-participants. Effects for Māori were similar in direction and scale to the overall results.

Conclusion: Our results show that people with mental health conditions or problematic substance use who receive employment support made available together with mental health and addiction treatment have more employment, gains in qualifications and more independent income when compared to similar people who do not receive this support. More research is needed to understand differences in engagement with mental health services and effects on participants' health and wellbeing.