Increasing the Impact of Interventions Incentivizing Psychiatric Treatment Engagement: Challenges and Opportunities

Individuals with psychiatric disorders often struggle to initiate and engage in treatment. Financial incentives improve treatment engagement, including treatment attendance, medication adherence, and abstinence from substance use. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently made the first large-scale, successful effort to implement incentive-based interventions in substance use disorder treatment. Health care systems, including the VA, can increase the impact of these interventions by extending them to target a range of psychiatric disorders, adapting them for specific clinical contexts, using insights from behavioral economics, and partnering with corporations to fund incentives and implement interventions.

Automated summary

Individuals with psychiatric disorders often struggle to engage in treatment, but financial incentives can improve treatment outcomes. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently implemented successful incentive-based interventions in substance use disorder treatment, and other healthcare systems can learn from this experience and apply similar approaches to other psychiatric disorders.