SBRI Healthcare-funded disabled employment support project success

Wellmind Health has successfully completed their SBRI Healthcare-funded project to support disabled jobseekers with mental health difficulties to enter or remain in the workplace. Results from the evaluation study into the effects of using the enhanced Be Mindful Workplace digital therapeutic evidenced significant improvements in the mental health and work readiness of disabled participants.

The collaborative project adapted Be Mindful, Wellmind Health's clinical-grade digital mindfulness-based cognitive therapy programme. In partnership with Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber (Health Innovation Y&H) and leading disability job board for disabled people, Evenbreak, the Be Mindful Workplace project was designed to specifically address the needs of disabled jobseekers and to aid their workplace retention with accessible, flexible mental health support.

Completers of the enhanced programme recorded far greater reductions in anxiety, depression and stress compared to the control group. Results relating to work readiness and job retention also evidenced significant improvements. The outcomes of this project demonstrate that the mental health and wellbeing outcomes for this population, and using the adapted version of Be Mindful, were consistent with those typically seen for existing and non-disabled peer users of Be Mindful.

Average improvements across mental health measurements at one-month follow-up

Average improvements across work-related measurements at one-month follow-up

All design updates were informed by a recruited group of individuals with lived experience of a variety of disabilities including physical disabilities, blindness or visual impairment, hearing-related access needs, neurodivergence, cerebral palsy and long-term health conditions. Each member was either seeking work, navigating employment difficulty or bringing recent lived experience of disability and work-related exclusion.

A mixed-methods evaluation study then assessed observed change across anxiety, depression, perceived stress, work functioning, job-seeking confidence, workplace confidence and work-retention constructs. The five-month timescale of the data collection did not allow investigation into employment success outcomes such as job starts, sustained employment, reduced service use or employer savings for this cohort. However, the initial work-related outcomes are strong positive indicators.

Designed around lived experience

The project's design was crucial to its success. Alongside Evenbreak, a Patient Advisory Group (PAG) of twelve was selected from over 180 applicants to provide varied lived experience of disability, mental health difficulty and employment barriers that informed the design enhancements. Focusing on each stage of the employment journey, Health Innovation Y&H then worked with Wellmind Health to gather actionable insights to refine the intervention and inform accessibility improvements to ensure it met real needs.

"We were co-creating a new version of the programme; it wasn't something being rubber stamped, so we felt we were really making a difference. The great thing about the Wellmind Health tool is that it taught you techniques which you could use without the tool and which will be useful for different situations in the future."

PAG members named the work-related harms, defined what support should feel like, translated access barriers into product changes, shaped what was measured, then explained both the positive outcomes and helped close the remaining design gap. Accessibility updates went beyond AA WCAG 2.2 compliance and examined practical inclusion for deaf, disabled and neurodivergent users, with changes including BSL content, EasyRead transcripts, hosted transcripts, playback controls, screen-reader improvements, alternative activities, revised content warnings, plainer email copy and a richer outcome set.

The enhanced programme was then tested in an oversubscribed evaluation study. SBRI noted that the project was the first in their experience that had included end-to-end patient involvement. The learnings and accessibility developments from this project have not just been applied to Be Mindful. Many enhancements have now been incorporated into all Wellmind Health's digital therapeutic programmes, Pathway through Pain, Pathway through Arthritis and Meditainment.