Preferences for Early Intervention Mental Health Services: A Discrete-Choice Conjoint Experiment

Abstract

Provision of a range of services may maximize EIS use. Professionals may be more apt to adopt EISs in line with their beliefs regarding patient preferences. Considering several perspectives is important for service design.

Investigating service features to sustain engagement in early intervention mental health services

“…The methods of this study are similar to the first survey (Becker et al, ) and, therefore, these will be briefly summarized here. Participant recruitment occurred in six outpatient clinics affiliated with St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, including a mood disorders clinic, an anxiety disorders clinic, a schizophrenia clinic, two general psychiatry clinics and an EIS for psychosis.…”

“…The methods of this study are similar to the first survey (Becker et al, 2016) and, therefore, these will be briefly summarized here. The survey was developed using recommended research practices for designing DCEs (Bridges et al, 2011;Johnson et al, 2013).…”

“…Incorporating patient perspectives alongside those of professionals and family members appears to provide added value when designing and implementing EISs (Aarons, ; Holley, Hodges, & Jeffers, ). Patients’ and professionals’ viewpoints regarding mental health treatments have differed in previous studies (Barr, Forcino, Mishra, Blitzer, & Elwyn ; Becker et al, ; Holley et al, ). Addressing the perspectives of both users and providers in service design would be expected to enhance the buy‐in required from all parties for a new service to be successful.…”

“…DCEs have been used to study the treatment preferences of patients with depression (Dwight‐Johnson et al, ) and schizophrenia (Levitan et al, ), parents of children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Waschbusch et al, ), patient‐centred care preferences (Cunningham et al, ) and preferences of young adults for information about mood and anxiety disorders (Cunningham et al, ). We have previously used DCEs to investigate the service attributes that patients, family members and professionals view as important for increasing the likelihood that people experiencing emerging mental health problems would initiate contact with an EIS (Becker et al, ). Latent class analysis (LCA) revealed two segments with contrasting preferences.…”

“…In contrast, the convenient-service segment (57%) endorsed features that facilitated access to care such as walk-in appointments. Both segments predicted patients would be more likely to contact an EIS that included short wait times, face-toface contact, patient autonomy and information regarding psychological treatments (Becker et al, 2016).…”