Evaluation of the Bounce Back Program

Lifetime prevalence rates of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in Canada are between 10-12% with approximately 1.5 million Canadians reporting depression in any given year. Alarmingly, the burden of ill health associated with MDD is projected to increase worldwide such that by the year 2020, depression will move from its current position of fourth to become the second greatest burden of ill health, closely following ischaemic heart disease (Murray & Lopez, 1998). As depressed patients are often in frequent contact with their primary care physicians for other health problems, effective depression treatment and management currently relies heavily on the primary care sector. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an empirically supported psychotherapy that is recommended by the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments Clinical Guidelines as a first-line treatment for depression. However, across Canada, CBT is not readily accessible by primary care physicians for their patients, particularly in rural areas.

To help address this nationwide need for CBT, British Columbia (BC) is the first and only province in Canada to develop and implement a high capacity mental health service, Bounce Back: Reclaim your Health (BB), for primary care patients with mild to moderate depression. In BB, the patients' use of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) self-help materials is supported via trained telephone coaches.

The primary objective of our proposed research is to provide direct evidence of the effectiveness of the BB program, and, in particular, the telephone coaching component. The investigators will test: (1) whether the BB program is more effective than general practitioner (GP) treatment-as-usual (TAU); and (2) whether BB's positive results can be attributed to the telephone coaching component, as this component is associated with the most significant costs of the program. A secondary objective is to assess the cost-effectiveness of such telephone support.