Judit Simon was elected to the Executive Board of ASPHER at the 2025 ASPHER Deans' & Directors' Retreat in Berlin. ASPHER (the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region) is the key independent European organisation dedicated to improving and protecting the public health by strengthening education and training of public health professionals for both practice and research.
A new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry, titled “Pramipexole augmentation for the acute phase of treatment-resistant, unipolar depression: a placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomised trial in the UK“ presents the largest trial to date investigating the efficacy of pramipexole in treating treatment-resistant depression.
The study found that pramipexole augmentation of antidepressant treatment led to a reduction in symptoms compared to placebo at 12 weeks. While the treatment was associated with some adverse effects, the results suggest that pramipexole is a clinically effective option for reducing symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant depression.
Link to the publication.
A recent study led by Judit Simon from the Department of Health Economics, Center for Public Health, at the Medical University of Vienna shows for the first time comprehensively the extent to which people with mental disorders suffer from physical illnesses – and the resulting hospital costs. The analysis of data from 32 European countries, published The Lancet Psychiatry, shows that the inpatient and emergency treatment of physical comorbidities in alcohol use disorders, depression, bipolar disorders and schizophrenia accounted for a total of around 30.5 billion euros in additional annual hospital costs in Europe in 2019.
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Click here for the publication.
12 June 2025
PriMHE - Programme in the Methods of Health Economics
"Real-word data and evidence in regulatory decision-making"
Associate Professor Joshua D. Wallach
(Department of Epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health)
Almost one in five people in Austria suffers from mental health problems, many with additional physical health problems. The tangible consequences of social and demographic developments further aggravate the need for access to optimized, integrated mental healthcare services. For this reason, the Department of Health Economics at the Medical University of Vienna is conducting a primary data collection survey in Vienna as part of the multidisciplinary research project STREAMLINE, funded by the Viennese Science and Technology Fund. The aim of the project is to create an atlas of available services for people with mental illness and a catalog with relevant aggregated cost information for future research and care planning.
Relevant Viennese service providers were identified based on publicly available information. These providers will be approached by email to take part in the data collection from 22nd of April to 23rd of May (for individual service providers) and 30th of May, 2025 (for organisations). For each completed survey, € 10 will be donated to a charity organization on behalf of the STREAMLINE project.