Employee’s Preferences for Access to Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy to Reduce the Risk of Depressive Relapse—A Discrete Choice Experiment

Disseminating mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), an evidence-based group treatment, in the workplace may help employees who have recovered from depression to prevent depressive relapse and stay well. Employees’ potential confidentiality concerns about participating in a group-based workplace MBCT intervention may be alleviated by delivering MBCT in alternative formats that would maintain the employees’ anonymity. The aim of the current study was to determine the stated preferences of employees from large healthcare organizations for four different MBCT delivery methods (i.e., group, online group, individual, and individual via the telephone). We determined the stated preferences of 151 health authority employees for the four MBCT delivery methods using a discrete choice experiment comprised of 18 choice sets of five attributes. A latent class model was used to evaluate the heterogeneity of respondents' preferences. This analysis suggested that four classes existed in the sample. The most important preferences were the effectiveness of MBCT, the type of interaction, face-to-face delivery, and receipt of MBCT on their own time. These results suggest strong preferences for the four different MBCT delivery methods. The presence of latent classes also shows that preferences for alternative modes of delivery vary in association with differences in sociodemographic variables between groups of employees. The overall findings of this study have the potential to influence the development of institutional programs that could make workplace MBCT more appealing to a greater number of employees, thereby improving participant uptake, decreasing the potential for depressive relapse, and minimizing absenteeism.