[Towards a sustainable, cost-effective mental health care; a policy perspective]. / Op weg naar een duurzame ggz; een beleidsperspectief.

BACKGROUND: After a decade of robust growth in spending, Dutch mental healthcare is on a more stricter budgetary path since 2012. High prevalence of illness and limited spending, imply the need for efficient mental healthcare delivery.
AIM: To advise how mental health care can be managed more efficiently. There will also have to be more differentiation between mild and serious psychiatric illnesses.
METHOD: Review of academic articles and policy studies.
RESULTS: With regard to the treatment of fairly common disorders, more attention needs to be given to integrated basic care and e-health. Employers and stakeholders can perhaps play a role in financing some of these services. Severe mental disorders can be handled more often on an integrated ambulatory basis setting than only in a hospital setting, while scaling down inpatient capacity. These steps would represent a major transition and would require spending cuts and a change in the provider 'landscape'.
CONCLUSION: Sustainable mental healthcare is inseparably linked to an agenda that provides value for money and it implies a major transition. However, in principle, it should be possible to fit these changes into the current system of governance. More attention needs to be given to coordination between the various domains, and to a reduction in administrative costs. Reimbursement methods should align e-health, collaborative care, case-management and best-practice pathways.

Lymphocyte glucocorticoid receptor resistance and depressive symptoms severity: a preliminary report.

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of the temporal interrelationship of neuropsychiatric parameters requires technologies allowing frequent biological measurements. We propose glucocorticoid receptor (GR) function of lymphocytes to assess the temporal relationship between glucocorticoid resistance and the course of major depressive disorder. METHOD: Dexamethasone suppression of lymphocyte proliferation was in vitro assessed via 5-bromo-2' deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation in DNA. Optimal conditions were determined using blood of healthy volunteers. Thereafter the relation between depression severity (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, HDRS, scores), lymphocyte proliferation and morning cortisol levels in blood was studied in thirteen depressed patients, mostly with a history of treatment resistance. RESULTS: Recovery from depression was not directly associated with changes in lymphocyte glucocorticoid resistance. However, a negative correlation was observed between HDRS and BrdU incorporation and a positive correlation between morning cortisol and BrdU incorporation. No significant correlation was found between cortisol and HDRS. Regression analyses showed that HDRS was related to both suppression of BrdU incorporation (beta -0.508, p<0.001) and cortisol levels (beta 0.364, p=0.001) in a highly significant model (F2,60=14,244, p<0.001) Except for one case, such relation could not be found within patients. CONCLUSION: Our preliminary results suggest a mutual relation between lymphocyte GR function, morning cortisol levels and MDD symptom severity. A direct relation between glucocorticoids resistance and recovery may not exist, but glucocorticoid resistance might attenuate or prevent recovery. It is clear that additional studies using larger and more homogenous groups of MDD patients are required to support our findings.