Health economic aspects of interventions for children and young people's mental health

Depression and psychosomatic symptoms are common problems which are acquired during childhood. The annual cost of depression in Sweden is 3.5 billion SEK. The aim of the project is to investigate the cost- effectiveness of early interventions to prevent depression and other mental illness by 1) describe morbidity, quality of life losses and social costs in adulthood related to psychosomatic symptoms and depression in adolescence, 2) develop a health economic model (known as Markov model) to estimate the long-term benefits of early interventions, and 3) evaluate the cost-effectiveness of early interventions with the help of the model. The project builds on existing data for 631 individuals who were interviewed 1991-93 (as 16-17 year olds), of which 409 were interviewed again 2006-08. Half of them had high scores on depression scales and half were matched controls with low scores. Data available on such things as mental illness in adulthood, health care utilization, income, sickness and unemployment. In addition, data are available for 112 teenage girls with psychosomatic disorders who participated in an RCT study with dance followed up to 20 months.