Public health mindfulness program saves on mental health costs
Posted 12.27.2019 | by AMRA
National health care spending for mental disorders in the United States exceeds $200 billion a year. Public health promotion programs that aim to reduce the incidence of mental disorders have the potential to reduce the direct and indirect social and health care costs involved in mental health care.
A previous study showed that a mindfulness-based universal health promotion program called the Life Balance program prevented the emergence of new psychological symptoms in 1 of every 16 people treated at one year follow up. While these results were promising, this study did not address whether the program was cost-effective.
Müller et al. [BMC Public Health] used insurance fund cost data and a measure of anxiety and depressive symptoms to analyze the program’s cost-effectiveness over the course of a year.
The Life Balance program, a mindfulness-based health promotion program implemented in the German state of Baden-Wüerttemberg in 2014, trained 240 health coaches to deliver preventative mental health services at 80 different health care centers. The Life Balance program consisted of 6 weekly 90-minute group sessions drawing on strategies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and Compassion-Focused Therapy.
A total of 583 Life Balance participants who were associated with a statutorily mandated health insurance fund (average age = 50 years; 85% female) agreed to participate in the study. They were compared to a group of 583 controls drawn from the same insurance fund pool and matched on Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) scores, age, sex, health status, activity level, and prior health care costs.
HADS scores were collected at baseline, post-intervention, and 6- and 12-month follow-up. Costs for medications, hospital stays, outpatient and rehabilitation visits, and lost […]