Recruiting participants for interventions to prevent the onset of depressive disorders: Possibile ways to increase participation rates

Although indicated prevention of depression is available for about 80% of the Dutch population at little or no cost, only a small proportion of those with subthreshold depression make use of these services.

A narrative review is conducted of the Dutch preventive services in mental health care, also addressing the problem of low participation rates. We describe possible causes of these low participation rates, which may be related to the participants themselves, the service system, and the communication to the public, and we put forward possible solutions to this problem.

There are three main groups of reasons why the participation rates are low: reasons within the participants (e.g., not considering themselves as being at risk; thinking the interventions are not effective; or being unwilling to participate because of the stigma associated with depression); reasons within the health care system; and reasons associated with the communication about the preventive services. Possible solutions to increasing the participation rate include organizing mass media campaigns, developing internet-based preventive interventions, adapting preventive interventions to the needs of specific subpopulations, positioning the services in primary care, integrating the interventions in community-wide interventions, and systematically screening high-risk groups for potential participants.

Prevention could play an important role in public mental health in reducing the enormous burden of depression. However, before this can be realized more research is needed to explore why participation rates are low and how these rates can be improved.