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In a study in this month's Psychiatric Services by Jurgen Unutzer,Wayne Katon and colleagues, the concept of willingness to pay for the treatment of depression in primary care was evaluated.
 The authors reviewed data from over 600 depressed primary care patients to evaluate their willingness to pay for depression treatment. In this randomized controlled study, patients were asked at baseline and again at 6 months, just how much they would be willing to pay per month for a 6 month treatment that would alleviate their depressive symptoms.
Statistical analyses estimated the association between demographic and clinical factors and willingness to pay for depression treatment and if there were any changes. As one would expect, willingness to pay was significantly associated with household income and with the severity of depressive symptoms. But they found that over six months, the amount that participants were willing to pay decreased along with their severity of depressive symptoms.
The researchers concluded that "the amount that participants were willing to pay was comparable to that reported for the treatment of other chronic medical disorders and higher than the actual cost of depression treatment. Measurements of willingness to pay may be a promising method for assessing the value of treatments for common mental disorders."
Recent related research
In a similar study in Medical Care, researchers studied willingness to pay (WTP) in migrane sufferers but this was devised as an Internet based study. They used computer software to measure participants' WTP for a hypothetical ideal drug (one that was 100% effective, worked quickly, and had no adverse effects) and for other hypothetical drugs, each with one "less than ideal" attribute of performance.
WTP was associated with participants' own migraine experience: severity of pain, frequency of headaches, and the types of medications used in the past. WTP was reduced when pharmaceuticals offered less benefit, ranging from a mean of 74% of ideal for treatments that failed to relieve nausea, to 43% of ideal in treatments associated with a 50% chance of a rebound headache. Researchers concluded that there is wide variability in patients' strength of preference for different attributes of migraine therapy. Choice of therapy for migraine headache should be individualized based on patients' preferences. WTP measures appear to be a valid and feasible metric for quantifying treatment preferences for migraine therapies.
9:44:36 PM 
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