Assessing the Benefits and Harms Associated with Early Diagnosis from the Perspective of Parents with Multiple Children Diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a rare neuromuscular disorder diagnosed in childhood. Limited newborn screening in the US often delays diagnosis. With multiple FDA-approved therapies, early diagnosis is crucial for timely treatment but may entail other benefits and harms.

PERSPECTIVE: Health Economic Interests at NIMH and NIDA to Improve Delivery of Behavioral Health Services.

Background: Effective financing mechanisms are essential to ensuring that people can access and utilize effective treatments and services. Financing mechanisms are needed not only to pay for the delivery of those treatments and services, but also ancillary costs, while also keeping care affordable.

Aims: This article highlights key areas of the interest of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in supporting applied health economics and health care financing research.

PERSPECTIVE: A Path to Value-Based Insurance Design for Mental Health Services.

Background: Aligning cost of mental health care with expected clinical and functional benefits of that care would incentivize the delivery of high value treatments and services. In turn, ineffective or untested care could still be offered but at costs high enough to offset the delivery of high value care.

Aims: The authors comment on Benson and Fendrick's paper on Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) for mental health in the September 2023 special issue of this journal.

Feasibility, Perceived Impact, and Acceptability of a Socially Assistive Robot to Support Emotion Regulation With Highly Anxious University Students: Mixed Methods Open Trial.

Background: Mental health difficulties among university students have been rising rapidly over the last decade, and the demand for university mental health services commonly far exceeds available resources. Digital interventions are seen as one potential solution to these challenges. However, as in other mental health contexts, digital programs often face low engagement and uptake, and the field lacks usable, engaging, evidence-supported mental health interventions that may be used flexibly when students need them most.

PERSPECTIVE: Economic and Policy Research Interests Highlighted in the 25th NIMH-Sponsored Mental Health Services Research Conference.

Background: The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) remains committed to addressing real-world challenges with delivering high quality mental health care to people in need by advancing a services research agenda to improve access, continuity, quality, equity, and value of mental healthcare nationwide, and to improve outcomes for people with serious mental illnesses (SMI). The NIMH-Sponsored Mental Health Services Research Conference (MHSR) is a highly productive venue for discussing topics of interest to NIMH audiences and disseminating NIMH's latest research findings directly to mental health clinicians, policy makers, administrators, advocates, consumers, and scientists who attend.

Aims: This Perspective summarizes and provides highlights from the 25th MHSR.