Deploying eHealth across Europe to face depression

Introduction: Around 50% of those suffering a depression do not receive treatment and this is due to barriers such as lack of resources for mental health care or stigma related to mental disorders. Research shows that some of these barriers can be successfully overcome with ICT-based solutions among which Computerized Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (cCBT) has proven to be an effective and cost effective treatment for depression. Unfortunately the use of these ICT is still anecdotal in most regions and little is known about the potential health and economic impact of its generalization.Mastermind project is an EC co-funded project involving 23 partners of 11 European countries. Mastermind pretends to up-scale cCBT based interventions across distinct European regions and study the barriers and facilitators of the implementation process. In addition, a comprehensive evaluation process has been set up to study quantitative and qualitative indicators framed into seven domains: health problem, safety, clinical effectiveness, organizational aspects, economic aspects, patients perspective, socio/legal/ethical aspects.In the Basque Country 300 patients will participate in the cCBT intervention.Short description of the intervention: The integrated care based intervention deployed in the Basque Country aims to give a major role to the primary care professionals in the provision of care for patients with depression. The GP and GP practice nurse are responsible for identifying and recruiting patient fulfilling the inclusion criteria defined (>18 years with mild or moderate depression diagnosed by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9).Once the patient accepts to participate in the project, the primary care team trains him/her in the use of the cCBT programme and provides him/her with the required username and password. During the online therapy, the patient has to fill different health related questionnaires (PHQ-9, BDI, Euroqol and MANSA-2) and go through 8 educational modules. Each module contains three sections: explanatory text, summary presentation and a video. The patient is supposed to read the text, revise the presentation and listen to the video in order to internalize the content of the session. Afterwards, the patient fills some specific exercises that are reviewed by the GP.During the online therapy, the primary care team are in charge of monitoring the progress of the patient and are supported by the nursing of the eHealth Centre, who work 24x7, in several task