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Published on: July 19, 2017
Health-Economic Evaluation of Psychological Interventions for Anxiety Prevention: A Systematic Review
Patricia Moreno-Peral1, Sonia Conejo-Cerón1, Ben Wijnen1
1IBIMA Plataforma BIONAND, Málaga, Spain (Moreno-Peral, Conejo-Cerón); Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII), Madrid (Moreno-Peral, Conejo-Cerón); Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment (Moreno-Peral) and Department of Public Health and Psychiatry (Bellón), University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain; Centre of Economic Evaluation and Machine Learning, Trimbos Institute, Utrecht, the Netherlands (Wijnen, Lokkerbol, Smit); Barcelona Agency of Public Health, Community Health Service, and Center for Biomedical Research in Epidemiology and Public Health, Barcelona, Spain (Fernández); Department of Clinical Neuro and Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam (Smit); El Palo Health Centre, Health District of Primary Care Málaga-Guadalhorce, Málaga, Spain (Bellón).
Objective:
Although evidence supports the effectiveness of psychological interventions for prevention of anxiety, little is known about their cost-effectiveness. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review of health-economic evaluations of psychological interventions for anxiety prevention.
Methods:
PubMed, PsycInfo, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, EconLit, National Health Service (NHS) Economic Evaluations Database, NHS Health Technology Assessment, and OpenGrey databases were searched electronically on December 23, 2022. Included studies focused on economic evaluations based on randomized controlled trials of psychological interventions to prevent anxiety. Study data were extracted, and the quality of the selected studies was assessed by using the Consensus on Health Economic Criteria and the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool.
Results:
All included studies (N=5) had economic evaluations that were considered to be of good quality. In two studies, the interventions showed favorable cost-effectiveness compared with usual care groups. In one study, the intervention was not cost-effective. Findings from another study cast doubt on the cost-effectiveness of the intervention, and the cost-effectiveness of the intervention in the remaining study could not be established.
Conclusions:
Although the findings suggest some preliminary evidence of cost-effectiveness of psychological interventions for preventing anxiety, they were limited by the small number of included studies. Additional research on the cost-effectiveness of psychological interventions for anxiety in different countries and populations is required.
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