The Living Life to the Full college and free online courses are based on the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) approach and is offered at Further Education Colleges and free of charge online (www.livinglifetothefull.com). The classes teaches key skills such as identifying and challenging unhelpful thoughts, problem solving etc.

In the college course, total mean scores at baseline for knowledge questions was 8.20 increasing to 11.07 gain 2.87 p=.042). Self assessed skills were 24.00 at baseline, increasing to 34.20 at session 8 (mean difference = 10.20 p=.001). The Training Acceptability Rating scale showed content scores at session 1 of 77% rising to 91% at session 8. Process scores were 73% at session 1 rising to 89%, showing training acceptability throughout the course. The online course has over 15,000 registered users. 70% are clinical cases of anxiety (HAD scale), and 55% depression. 24% of users are clinical cases and are not receiving any support from a practitioner. The site has had over 4 million hits in 10 months and an average of 1000 hits/hour.

Delivering CBT in this way seems to lead to gains in mental health literacy. Such courses may provide another useful option for helping people access CBT for mild to moderate problems of distress. A RCT of the core course materials has just been completed.