Webinar - What psychologists should know about mental health economics
Webinar - What psychologists should know about mental health economics
The talk summarizes the literature on cost-effectiveness of psychological interventions for mental health. The World Health Organization has recently endorsed a resolution on the Economics of Health for All, with equality, sustainability, health and wellbeing as key future foci and health spending seen as a long-term investment. Poor mental health has an enormous social, economic and wellbeing burden, yet is not always a priority in health systems. Therefore, psychologists must think about health and wellbeing from a population and cost perspective to better inform policymakers.
A narrative review of the literature was conducted. Articles were included if they addressed cost-effectiveness of any of following broad areas:
- Prevention/promotion for mental health,
- Digital mental health interventions,
- Physical activity or exercise interventions for mental health,
- Psychotherapies for mental health.
While effectiveness of interventions has been established, cost-effectiveness literature is relatively scarce. Studies consistently report that mental health prevention and promotion activities are cost-effective or cost-saving. Digital interventions emerge as a very promising tool to significantly reduce costs. Despite their potential, more research is needed on physical activity and exercise interventions to establish their cost-effectiveness for mental health. The largest literature base has firmly established the cost-effectiveness of psychotherapies, including longer-term therapies for severe cases or shorter-term interventions for mild-moderate issues. Adding psychotherapies to people with behavioral risk factors and addictions, and chronic disease management and prevention programs is also cost-effective and should be seen as a health investment.
Our review indicates that scarce literature and costs cannot always be generalized across systems. It also shows cost-effectiveness of interventions for mental health has overall been established, albeit with varying levels of evidence according to the level of prevention or treatment of interest. It is likely that short-term therapies, group formats and digital delivery will be best for population approaches
About the speaker:
Frank Doyle is involved in wide-ranging research which includes the study depression, psychometrics, health behaviors and complex interventions. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in these areas and has impacted practice and policy in Ireland and more widely. Specifically, he has led collaborations to develop a novel metric for the assessment of medication adherence, establish a ‘hybrid’ systematic review approach to enable faster systematic reviews for network meta-analyses and framework reviews, and develop a technique for a non-parametric item response theory approach. He has contributed to policy by being an invited expert in numerous external bodies, including the Irish National Clinical Guidelines group, the All-Island Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care (AIIHPC), and the World Health Organization, and Writing Committees for the European Association of Preventive Cardiology. Frank Doyle was Chair of the Division of Health Psychology of Ireland from 2013-2015, and 2017-2018, and is a Fellow of the Psychological Society of Ireland since 2019. He was elected as a Fellow of the European Health Psychology Society in 2022.
Resources:
Presentation of the speaker and recording available here :