Characteristics of mental health service users attending Recovery Colleges in England: Baseline findings from Recovery Colleges Characterisation and Testing (RECOLLECT) 2

<b>Aims and Method:</b> Recovery Colleges (RCs) are adult education initiatives supporting personal recovery for individuals with mental health difficulties. We characterised a national inception cohort of mental health service users RC students from the RECOLLECT 2 programme and compared students attending different RC types on sociodemographic, clinical, service use, and student-reported outcomes over the four months prior to enrolment. Mixed effects regression models assessed differences.<br/><b>Results:</b> The cohort comprised 498 students from 36 RCs across England; 77.7% attended Strengths-oriented RCs. Mean age was 39 years (SD=12); most were female (72.1%) and White (81.5%). Common diagnoses were mood (31.3%) and anxiety disorders (29.7%). No significant differences were found between students attending Strengths-oriented versus Community-oriented RCs.<br/><b>Clinical implications: </b>Strengths- and Community-oriented RCs have similar service user student populations. Certain groups which may be underrepresented in RCs and RC research include older adults, men, those with developmental disorders, and ethnic minority populations.<br/><br/>