Cost-effectiveness of an indicated preventive intervention for depression in adolescents: a model to support decision making.

Background: Adolescent depression has negative health and economic outcomes in the short- and long-term. Indicated preventive interventions, in particular group based cognitive behavioural therapy (GB-CBT), are effective in preventing depression in adolescents with subsyndromal depression. However, little is known about the cost-effectiveness of these interventions.

Methods: A Markov cohort model was used to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses comparing a GB-CBT indicated preventive intervention for depression, to a no-intervention option in a Swedish setting. Taking a time horizon of 5- and 10 years, incremental differences in societal costs and health benefits expressed as differences in the proportion of cases of depression prevented, and as quality adjusted life years (QALYs) gained were estimated. Through univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analyses, the robustness of the results was explored. Costs, presented in 2018 USD, and effects were discounted at a yearly rate of 3%.

Results: The base-case analysis showed that GB-CBT indicated preventive intervention incurred lower costs, prevented a larger proportion of cases of depression and generated higher QALYs compared to the no-intervention option for both time horizons. Offering the intervention was even a cost saving strategy and demonstrated a probability of being cost-effective of over 95%. In the sensitivity analyses, these results were robust to the modelling assumptions.

Limitations: The study considered a homogeneous cohort and assumed a constant annual decay rate of the relative treatment effect.

Conclusions: GB-CBT indicated preventive interventions for depression in adolescence can generate good value for money compared to leaving adolescents with subsyndromal depression untreated.