Background:
Mental health interventions in low-resource settings must be both effective and affordable. Thisstudy calculated the actual costs of delivering the Shamiri intervention and determined whether the healthimprovements justified the investment.
Methods:
Researchers tracked all costs associated with delivering Shamiri to 288 adolescents in a randomizedtrial, including provider salaries, training, materials, and overhead. They compared symptom improvement perdollar spent for Shamiri versus a control intervention. Cost-effectiveness was measured by calculating cost persymptom reduction and cost per person achieving clinically significant improvement.
Findings:
Shamiri cost $7.08 per person served, compared to $10.72 for the control intervention. For everydollar spent, Shamiri produced greater symptom reduction than control. The cost per person achieving clinicalimprovement was $8.85 for Shamiri versus $16.20 for control. These costs are dramatically lower thantraditional therapy approaches.
Implications:
Shamiri offers exceptional value for money, making it feasible to implement at scale in resourceconstrained settings. The intervention's low cost and high effectiveness demonstrate that quality mental healthcare doesn't require expensive infrastructure or highly trained specialists. These findings support increasedinvestment in lay-provider-delivered interventions as a cost-effective strategy for addressing youth mentalhealth needs in low-income countries.
