The Essen Economics of Mental Health Workshop took place in Essen, Germany on 25th and 26th June 2018 organized by Ansgar Wübker and Christoph Kronenberg.
A heterogeneous group of fourteen attendees participated in the workshop, from PhD students to Emeritus Professor, from the UK to Switzerland all interested in the economics of mental health.
After a welcoming of the two hosts, Jan Böhnke started with the first Keynote. He focused on the classification of diagnoses and measurement of mental health in general and contrasted it with other concepts such as well-being and happiness. Since Jan’s background is in psychology and epidemiology, the change of perspective was very helpful for economists and created more awareness of adopting existing labels, measures or scores.
Rowena Jacobs held the second keynote in the afternoon. She talked about the organization and funding of mental health services. She pointed out a problem that is linked to mental illness is the stigma the patients are often confronted with. Fear of stigma and subsequently being socially excluded may lead to a treatment gap of affected people who do not seek help.
In between the keynote sessions and during the next day we concentrated on the work of the participants. Different to most conferences and workshops paper presentations were held by the discussants not the authors of the papers. Each discussant had 30 minutes to present and discuss the paper. Afterwards, the author had some minutes to clarify or respond before everyone could ask questions and participate in the discussion. The papers were shared among all participants before the workshop to allow everyone to contribute to the discussion.
Peter Zweifel presented the work of Sanne Kruse-Becher and her colleagues. They are analysing how migrants’ mental health is affected by conflicts in their home countries. A current and interesting topic. Sarah Hofmann was the discussant of the paper by Ingo Kolodziej and his co-authors. They are interested in the effect of the double burden of long-term care and work on the mental health of a caregiver. In a society with an ageing population, this is a topic with huge relevance. These two presentations show how different the research areas for the economics of mental health can be.
In the evening of the first day, we took a walk through the city and visited a nice restaurant. They served delicious Turkish food. It was nice to have some time to get to know each other.
I really enjoyed those two days. It was a successful workshop with a nice new format, which – in my opinion – leads to detailed comments and discussions.
Was sind die wirtschaftlichen Aspekte der Behandlung psychischer Erkrankungen? Essen Economics of Mental Health Workshop des @CINCHessen am 25./26. Juni in Essen mit Richard G. Frank (Harvard University), Rowena Jacobs (University of York) und @jrboehnke (University of Dundee). pic.twitter.com/awEiTr1kD5
— RWI Leibniz-Institut (@RWI_Leibniz) June 26, 2018
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