Health-economic Evaluation of the IPS (Individual Placement and Support) Model for Helping People With Severe Mental Disorders Access Employment in the Ordinary Labor Market, Compared to Standard Methods of Helping People Return to Work: a Prospective Real-life Study

Condition(s) studied

Investigational drug(s) / intervention(s)

Individual Placement and Support Model: The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model is an employment support program specifically designed for people with severe mental illness (Bond, Drake, \& Becker, 2012). The core philosophy of IPS is that anyone can obtain competitive employment in the open labor market, provided it is the right job combined with appropriate support. IPS support is delivered by a job coach, specifically trained in this model, who devotes their entire working time to assisting patients in their vocational integration.

Standard Method: In psychiatric wards, patients who wish to do so are usually offered support to initiate the process of returning to competitive employment in the open labor market. This assistance is provided by the social workers (such as social workers or educators) within the care unit.

Study summary

The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model was developed in the United States in the 1990s to help people with severe mental health issues get back into regular jobs. This model is based on the idea that a quick job search that takes into account what patients want, followed by ongoing and intensive support in the community, is especially good for this group. To date, although the effectiveness of the IPS model has been widely demonstrated (for a review, see Metcalfe et al., 2018), only a few studies have evaluated its efficiency in foreign contexts (Knapp et al., 2013; Christensen et al., 2020).

Although the IPS model has been in place in France for around ten years, no studies have yet been conducted to validate its efficiency in the French healthcare system.

The main objective of this prospective, real-life, multicenter study is to evaluate the efficiency of the IPS practice model compared to the conventional method of follow-up by social workers for patients with severe mental illness in terms of cost per additional day worked, from a collective perspective.

Eligibility

Primary outcome measure(s)

• Efficiency of the IPS practice model compared to the conventional method of follow-up by social workers for patients with severe mental illness — 18 months
  Incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) expressed as cost per additional day worked at 18 months, from a collective perspective, of the IPS practice model in patients with severe mental disorders.

Trial sites (11)

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