Mental health

This economic evaluation won the inaugural Australian Clinical Trials Alliance HEAT-ACTA Excellence in Trial-based Health Economics Award in 2023. It was conducted alongside the first randomised controlled trial of an e-health platform designed to personally tailor depression management in primary care. The results suggest that, over 12 months, the screening and intervention program is likely to be a more effective and cost-effective approach than usual care in general practice. Our findings are of particular importance given the focus on digital mental health programs recommended by the Australian Productivity Commission Inquiry Report into Mental Health.

This is the first study which found that the online youth mental health help-seeking Web service is a cost-effective intervention for young people aged 18 to 25 years compared with traditional search methods in Australia.

This study evaluated the cost-effectiveness of Horyzons, a novel online social therapy to support young people aged 16-27 years following discharge from first episode psychosis service, showing that the intervention is cost-effective and results in large net budget savings to the Australian healthcare system.

This research found that nine of the 10 interventions modelled provided excellent value for money and would likely save more resources than they cost. This research was cited by the Productivity Commission into Australia’s mental health care system and was subsequently published in a series of papers. It has informed investment discussions for preventive interventions into mental disorders and cited by organisations such as Prevention United.

This study examined the cost effectiveness of family-based treatment compared to individual therapy and treatment as usual for adolescents with anorexia nervosa. Results supported the implementation of an intensive but very cost-effective first-line family therapy for adolescents with anorexia nervosa. Findings of this study were used by the Medicare Eating Disorder Taskforce to inform the revised Medicare funding policy in 2019 for people with eating disorders – whereby people with eating disorders can now receive up to 60 treatment sessions compared to 10 sessions in the past.

This study showed that commonly used preference-based quality of life instruments are unable to capture the impact of depression, except for the AQoL-8D. This has important implications around the choice of outcome measure for use in economic evaluations of mental health interventions.

This study found that many questionnaires used to determine quality-adjusted life-years (including the EQ-5D, the SCU9D and the AQoL 6D) are valid and sensitivity measures in children/adolescents with mental disorders when compared to other self-report mental health outcome measures. When these questionnaires were compared to questionnaires completed by clinicians or carers they did not perform as well.

This world-first study found that people with an eating disorder including bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorders have significantly lower quality of life relative to those without an eating disorder and comparable quality of life of those with a mental disorder including generalised anxiety disorder, depression, schizophrenia, panic disorder or mood disorder. Findings of this study was used by the Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health to inform the impacts of eating disorders on quality of life.

This review summarizes existing evidence on the cost of loneliness and cost-effectiveness of interventions that aim to alleviate loneliness. The findings highlight a significant evidence gap, calling for more research in that area.