Economic evaluations of eHealth interventions targeting mental health problems in the workplace: a systematic review.

Background: Work-related mental health problems impose significant economic and personal burdens. eHealth interventions may offer low-cost, practical solutions, but guidance on their cost-effectiveness in workplace mental health is limited.

Objective: The objective of this study was to systematically review economic evaluations of workplace eHealth interventions for mental health, offering insights into methodologies and cost-effectiveness outcomes.

The impact of informal care provision on the quality of life of adults caring for persons with mental health problems: A cross-sectional assessment of caregiver quality of life.

This study assessed the quality of life of informal caregivers for individuals with mental health problems in the Netherlands. An online survey was administered to a panel of informal caregivers in June 2020 ( = 261). Informal caregivers of persons with mental problems were found to have an exceptionally low quality of life.

The Development of a New Approach for the Harmonized Multi-Sectoral and Multi-Country Cost Valuation of Services: The PECUNIA Reference Unit Cost (RUC) Templates.

Background: Increasing healthcare costs require evidence-based resource use allocation for which assessing costs rigorously and comparably is crucial. Harmonized cross-country costing methods for evaluating interventions from a societal perspective are lacking. This study presents the development process and content of the service costing templates developed as part of the European project PECUNIA.

The EMPOWER Occupational e-Mental Health Intervention Implementation Checklist to Foster e-Mental Health Interventions in the Workplace: Development Study.

Background: Occupational e-mental health (OeMH) interventions significantly reduce the burden of mental health conditions. The successful implementation of OeMH interventions is influenced by many implementation strategies, barriers, and facilitators across contexts, which, however, are not systematically tracked. One of the reasons is that international consensus on documenting and reporting the implementation of OeMH interventions is lacking.

Design and development of a digital intervention for workplace stress and mental health (EMPOWER).

Purpose: We describe the design and development of the European Platform to Promote health and wellbeing in the workplace (EMPOWER) digital intervention that provides an integrative user programme meeting the needs of employees and employers in addressing work stress.

Results: A user-centred design process was followed from January 2020 until November 2021. A tailored algorithm was developed to provide support at the individual employee level and the company level.

The identification of economically relevant health and social care services for mental disorders in the PECUNIA project.

Background: Health economic research is still facing significant problems regarding the standardization and international comparability of health care services. As a result, comparative effectiveness studies and cost-effectiveness analyses are often not comparable. This study is part of the PECUNIA project, which aimed to improve the comparability of economic evaluations by developing instruments for the internationally standardized measurement and valuation of health care services for mental disorders.

Obtaining preference scores for an abbreviated self-completion version of the Teen-Addiction Severity Index (ASC T-ASI) to value therapy outcomes of systemic family interventions: a discrete choice experiment.

Background: Systemic family interventions for adolescents with problems of substance use and/or delinquency are increasingly focused subject of economic evaluations. Treatment effects go beyond improvements in commonly measured health-related quality of life (HRQOL). The Teen-Addiction Severity Index (T-ASI) was identified as capable of capturing these broad outcomes.

Multiplier Effects and Compensation Mechanisms for Inclusion in Health Economic Evaluation: A Systematic Review.

Background: Compensation mechanisms and multiplier effects may affect productivity losses due to illness, disability, or premature death of individuals. Hence, they are important in estimating productivity losses and productivity costs in the context of economic evaluations of health interventions. This paper presents a systematic literature review of papers focusing on compensation mechanisms and multiplier effects, as well as whether and how they are included in health economic evaluations.

Effectiveness of tailored digital health interventions for mental health at the workplace: A systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

Mental health problems in the workplace are common and have a considerable impact on employee wellbeing and productivity. Mental ill-health costs employers between £33 billion and £42 billion a year. According to a 2020 HSE report, roughly 2,440 per 100,000 workers in the UK were affected by work-related stress, depression, or anxiety, resulting in an estimated 17.

Associations between autism traits and family functioning over time in autistic and non-autistic children.

Little is known about family functioning over time when raising a child with autism traits, with or without a clinical autism diagnosis. Therefore, we asked caregivers-mostly parents-of a group of 168 children about the family functioning and the child's emotional and behavioral characteristics, as well as autistic traits, twice with about 1 year in between. For numerous reasons, the children were referred to youth mental health care centers, including child and adolescent psychiatric services.

In search of a 'pan-European value set'; application for EQ-5D-3L.

Objectives: Country-specific value sets for the EQ-5D are available which reflect preferences for health states elicited from the general population. This allows the transformation of responses on EQ-5D to health state utility values. Only twelve European countries possess country-specific value sets and no value set reflecting the preferences of Europe exists.

Development of an Instrument for the Assessment of Health-Related Multi-sectoral Resource Use in Europe: The PECUNIA RUM.

Background: Measuring objective resource-use quantities is important for generating valid cost estimates in economic evaluations. In the absence of acknowledged guidelines, measurement methods are often chosen based on practicality rather than methodological evidence. Furthermore, few resource-use measurement (RUM) instruments focus on the measurement of resource use in multiple societal sectors and their development process is rarely described.

How Do Shifts in Patients with Mental Health Problems' Formal and Informal Care Utilization Affect Informal Caregivers?: A COVID-19 Case Study.

(1) Background: This study investigated how potential shifts in patients' formal and informal care utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their informal caregivers in terms of their subjective burden, psychological wellbeing, and happiness. (2) Methods: A retrospective cohort study design was employed for a panel of Dutch informal caregivers of persons with mental health problems ( = 219) in June 2020. Descriptive statistics and differences between means were determined for the patients' informal and care utilization and informal caregivers' subjective burden, happiness, and psychological wellbeing.

Study protocol of EMPOWER: A cluster randomized trial of a multimodal eHealth intervention for promoting mental health in the workplace following a stepped wedge trial design.

This article describes the EMPOWER study, a controlled trial aiming to determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an eHealth intervention to prevent common health problems and reduce presenteeism and absenteeism in the workplace. The EMPOWER intervention spans universal, secondary and tertiary prevention and consists of an eHealth platform delivered via a website and a smartphone app designed to guide employees throughout different modules according to their specific profiles. A stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial will be implemented in four countries (Finland, Poland, Spain and UK) with employees from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and public agencies.

Conceptual Framework for Optimised Proxy Value Set Selection Through Supra-National Value Set Development for the EQ-5D Instruments.

Background: Preference differences between countries and populations justify the use of country-specific value sets for the EQ-5D instruments. There are no clear criteria based on which the selection of value sets for countries without a national value set should be made. As part of the European PECUNIA project, this study aimed to identify factors contributing to differences in preference-based valuations and develop supra-national value sets for homogenous country clusters in Europe.

Strategies for Implementing Occupational eMental Health Interventions: Scoping Review.

Background: The implementation of eMental health interventions, especially in the workplace, is a complex process. Therefore, learning from existing implementation strategies is imperative to ensure improvements in the adoption, development, and scalability of occupational eMental health (OeMH) interventions. However, the implementation strategies used for these interventions are often undocumented or inadequately reported and have not been systematically gathered across implementations in a way that can serve as a much-needed guide for researchers.

In Search for Comparability: The PECUNIA Reference Unit Costs for Health and Social Care Services in Europe.

Improving the efficiency of mental healthcare service delivery by learning from international best-practice examples requires valid data, including robust unit costs, which currently often lack cross-country comparability. The European ProgrammE in Costing, resource use measurement and outcome valuation for Use in multi-sectoral National and International health economic evaluAtions (PECUNIA) aimed to harmonize the international unit cost development. This article presents the methodology and set of 36 externally validated, standardized reference unit costs (RUCs) for five health and social care services (general practitioner, dentist, help-line, day-care center, nursing home) in Austria, England, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, and Spain based on unambiguous service definitions using the extended DESDE PECUNIA coding framework.

Cost Effectiveness of Splenic Artery Embolization versus Splenectomy after Trauma in the Netherlands.

Purpose: To demonstrate that splenic artery embolization (SAE) is more cost-effective than splenectomy from a societal perspective in the Netherlands.

Materials And Methods: Patient-level data obtained from the SPLENIQ study were used to populate a health economic model and were supplemented with expert opinion when necessary. Propensity score matching was used to correct for baseline differences in injury severity scores.

Acceptability, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of blended cognitive-behavioural therapy (bCBT) versus face-to-face CBT (ftfCBT) for anxiety disorders in specialised mental health care: A 15-week randomised controlled trial with 1-year follow-up.

Background: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and cause substantial economic burden. Blended cognitive-behavioural therapy (bCBT), which integrates Internet-based CBT and face-to-face CBT (ftfCBT), is an attractive and potentially cost-saving treatment alternative to conventional CBT for patients with anxiety disorders in specialised mental health care. However, little is known about the effectiveness of bCBT in routine care.

Caring for Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder: Factors Associating with Health- and Care-Related Quality of Life of the Caregivers.

This study investigated the association of child, caregiver, and caregiving measurements with the quality of life (QoL) in 81 caregivers (mostly parents) of clinically referred children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We used the EuroQol five-dimensional (EQ-5D) questionnaire and the care-related QoL questionnaire (CarerQol) to respectively assess health-related QoL and care-related QoL. Health-related QoL was associated with the caregiver's internalizing problems and adaptive coping, explaining 38% of the variance.

Measurement Instruments of Productivity Loss of Paid and Unpaid Work: A Systematic Review and Assessment of Suitability for Health Economic Evaluations From a Societal Perspective.

Objectives: This study aimed (1) to perform a systematic literature review of instruments for measuring productivity loss of paid and unpaid work and (2) to assess the suitability (in terms of identification, measurement, and valuation) of these instruments for use in health economic evaluations from a societal perspective.

Methods: Articles published from 2018 were sourced from PubMed/Medline, PsycInfo, Embase, and Econlit. Using 2 separate search strategies, eligible economic evaluations and validation studies were selected and unique measurement instruments identified.

Patient, family and productivity costs of end-stage renal disease in the Netherlands; exposing non-healthcare related costs.

Background: Healthcare costs related to ESRD are well-described, but broader societal costs of ESRD are less known. This study aimed to estimate patient and family costs, including informal care costs and out-of-pocket costs, and costs due to productivity loss related to ESRD, for patients receiving dialysis and living with a kidney transplant, using a bottom-up approach.

Methods: A total of 655 patients were asked to complete a digital questionnaire consisting of two standardised instruments (iMCQ and iPCQ) from November 2016 through January 2017.