Special Interest Group - Economics of Mental Health

Mental health problems are a leading cause of disability, loss of wellbeing, and premature mortality. One in eight people worldwide live with a mental health condition, almost half of all Australians over 16 years of age will experience a mental illness during their life, around 1 in 5 experience mental health problems each year, and suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in 15-29 year-olds. These disorders affect the person’s thoughts, emotions, behaviour, relationships, and perceptions and include depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, addiction, and developmental disorders. As well as the psychological effects, people with mental illness often experience wider issues, in areas such as relationships, employment, and physical health, with lower life expectancy mostly related to preventable physical health problems.

Aim: To bring together health economists working on issues in mental health including services, policy, outcomes, and determinants.

Objectives:

  • Build capacity in health economics addressing mental health
  • Raise the profile of health economists to contribute to policy and practice relating to mental health
  • Develop a mutually supportive and collaborative network of health economists involved in mental health research
  • Provide opportunities for mentoring and advice regarding issues specific to mental health and with a particular focus on early career academics and students

  • Conduct regular meetings of the SIG including network-building, member presentations of their own work, journal club style presentations, discussion of funding opportunities, Q&A.
  • Organised session/s for AHES 2023 (potentially separate sessions for preferences & mental health, evaluation of mental health interventions, econometric analysis in mental health).
  • Develop avenues for dissemination of members’ research to raise the profile to policymakers and other target audiences (e.g. newsletter, Twitter account).

If you would like to join the SIG, please email the conveners:

Jemimah Ride at jemimah.ride@monash.edu

Conveners

Hannah Beilby
Hannah Beilby
University of Queensland

Hannah is an experienced health and social policy analyst with a background in research, consulting and as a registered pharmacist. She is interested in working across government, academia, industry, and the not-for-profit sector to find ways to make the healthcare system more impactful and equitable.  Hannah is due to submit her PhD thesis in late 2026, which uses empirical analysis to understand the links between loneliness, health literacy and health-related behaviours and outcomes

Marshall Makate
Marshall Makate
Curtin University
Rachel O’Loughlin
Rachel O’Loughlin
University of Melbourne

Dr Rachel O’Loughlin is a Research Fellow with the Child Health Economics Unit, within the Centre for Health Policy, at the University of Melbourne. Concurrently, she is an Honorary Research Associate with the Health Services and Economics group within the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; Editorial Board Member of the journal Mental Health and Prevention; and Co-Director of the Melbourne Academic Centre for Health (MACH) Health Services Research Future Leaders Fellowship Program. Rachel’s PhD, awarded in July 2024, examined how we define and measure ‘value’ in children’s mental healthcare. Rachel’s research has a strong focus on mental healthcare and health-related quality of life; eliciting patient preferences in healthcare; collaborating with consumer and carer lived experience groups to design research; designing measurement strategies to capture broader outcomes when measuring the impact of healthcare improvements and interventions; and using this information to improve the quality of healthcare in Australia.

Elcin Tuzel
Elcin Tuzel
University of Queensland

Elcin Tuzel is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health (CBEH) at the University of Queensland. She specialises in applied economics and uses statistical and econometric modelling to analyse the use of health resources, the impact of policies and health outcomes. She is particularly interested in optimising primary healthcare teams and developing policies to improve mental health. This includes researching adolescent mental health, peer interactions (e.g. bullying), and partner relationships, as well as their effects on mental health.

Befikadu Wubishet
Befikadu Wubishet
Flinders University

Dr Wubishet is a Research Fellow in Health Economics at the Caring Futures Institute, Flinders University. His research focuses on the economic evaluation of mental health interventions, with emphasis on populations with high support needs including older adults and people with disability and complex health needs. He applies cost-effectiveness analysis, linked administrative health data (including MBS and PBS), and patient-reported outcome measures to generate policy-relevant evidence that informs service delivery and funding decisions. He has experience working with longitudinal and administrative datasets to examine service utilisation, outcomes, health care costs, and value for money.