Description

The overarching goal of primary care is to offer all patients individualized and context-sensitive healthcare with high access and continuity. One of the reasons primary care struggles with this goal is that many patients suffer from mental health problems, while there is a lack of psychosocial resources as well as clear pathways for these patients.

Primary care behavioural health (PCBH, in Swedish IBH) is an innovative way of organizing primary care, where psychosocial resources have more and shorter visits, strive for same-day access, and have an active consulting role in the primary care team. To help patients with achieving relevant behavior changes, so called Brief Interventions are used. However, these interventions have not been systematically evaluated in the same way that CBT has, and there is a risk that patients that would have benefitted from structured CBT are undertreated.

This study is a pilot study preparing for a large multicenter study that will be conducted starting in late 2020. The investigators want to find out if an addition of an extended evaluation and possibility of treatment with guided CBT self-help can increase the treatment effects of PCBH on patient functioning and symptoms, compared to standard PCBH with a contextual assessment and brief interventions. In the process, the investigators are also conducting one of the first RCT on brief interventions. As this is a pilot study, the feasibility of implementing the study protocol in regular healthcare is also tested in order to collect high-quality data while creating minimal disturbance in the centers' ordinary routines.

Our main research questions are:

1. Does an extended version of PCBH, including an additional assessment and the option of guided self-help CBT when indicated by a patient's problem profile, lead to superior patient outcomes compared to standard PCBH where a brief, contextual assessment followed by Brief Interventions is the only option? If not, can standard PCBH be shown to be non-inferior?
2. Does the addition of guided self-help CBT have a negative effect on availability, reach, and cost-effectiveness compared to standard PCBH? If not, can guided self-help CBT be shown to be non-inferior to standard PCBH concerning these outcomes?

The project is a joint effort by Karolinska Institutet, Linnaeus University, and Capio Nrsjukvrd and will be conducted as a single-blind (patients) randomized trial within regular healthcare at two primary care centres with a total of approximately 75 patients. Time-points for measures are screening at the initial visit and follow-ups 4, 8 and 52 weeks later. Primary outcome will be the 12-item version of the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS-12). This is a condition-independent measure of everyday functioning that has been found to be relevant to mental health.

PCBH has the potential to increase the quality of care for patients with mental health problems. This study is the first to step towards answering the question if the effects of brief intervention are large enough to merit large-scale implementation, and if an add-on of other brief and easily implemented treatments can increase them. Our study will also answer whether the effects can be increased by adding previously empirically supported self-help, while still being cost-effective and maintain high availability of services. The goal is to create a more solid empirical base that can guide decision makers when they balance treatment effects, availability, and costs in determining which organizational models and interventions that are best used in primary care.

If the results are positive, this project functions as a concrete start to a large-scale implementation of this new method, since it is firmly placed within regular primary care and uses highly implementable interventions.