Essays on mental health policy modeling and development

Abstract

This study focuses on developing policy guidelines for the improvement of mental health services in Canada. By applying comprehensive approaches, we address prevalent issues in the mental health services such as access to mental healthcare, quality issues, capacity shortages and miscoordinations among mental health services. We developed analytical models to demonstrate the interrelated impacts of gaps in the mental health services in Canada on the performance of the system of mental healthcare. We proposed and validated pathways to solve those issues. In the first essay, we built a model to demonstrate how access issues in the mental health services increase the utilization of emergency departments. We presented solutions to minimize the total cost of the mental health system and manage the number of patients using the emergency departments for mental healthcare considering different contextual conditions. In the second essay, we constructed a framework to design mental health services integrating effectiveness and efficiency. We analyse patients’ preferences of the two important attributes of standardization and individualization and investigate how patients’ behaviours and characteristics impact the design of mental health services. In the third essay we developed a framework to build capacity and resilience via collaboration of mental health organizations in Nova Scotia. We derive optimal strategies to solve prevalent issues in the mental health system in Canada. By our multifactorial analysis, we incorporate the dynamics of an array of factors in the mental health services including personal, economic and system elements. This research bridges operational and mental health research fields to provide analytical and conceptual outcomes. Throughout our work, we verified the importance of following complementary strategies in designing of and implementing developments to mental health services. Based on the analysis and empirical evidence, the study delivers policy implications and practical roadmaps to improve mental heath services in Canada.