JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Mental illnesses are highly prevalent and significantly impact individuals and society. Patients suffering of long-term, severe mental disorders with functional impairment and reduced quality of life often have a history of anxiety and depressive disorders. Despite the long-term cost to both the patients and society, studies examining the various treatment effect over time, across diagnoses and experienced for the patients are scarce.

Objective:

The Norwegian Adult Mental Health Registry (NAMHR) aims to systematically reuse health data to monitor and improve treatment outcomes, patient safety, health service quality and research. The registry addresses the need for comprehensive data on the effects and utility of mental health services, interventions, and therapy variants in specialized mental health care.

Methods:

The NAMHR is a nationwide naturalistic register study, including all Norwegian adults eligible for treatment in specialized mental healthcare services (ca 170.000 in 2025) who have not opted out. The registry is based on secondary data use from the Norwegian Patient Registry (NPR), patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), patient-reported experience measures (PREMs), Norwegian Registry for Primary Health Care (NRPHC) and several other sources including Electronic Health Records (EHR). Data linkage uses unique national identity numbers, ensuring high-quality data. The registry collects information on diagnoses, treatments, medication, and patient reported outcomes, providing a holistic approach to mental health care. Statistical analyses will be defined in each specific projects. The NAMHR has no planned end date.

Results:

The study anticipates enrolling up to 170.000 participants, with new incidence rate around 10.000 a year. Key outcomes include both patient reported and automatic reported measurers. Enrollment is planned to start in 2026 with data available around mid-2026 for ethical approved research projects.

Conclusions:

The NAMHR will promote quality improvement initiatives and research, including registry-based randomized clinical trials (R-RCTs). The data collected will inform health policy decisions at local, regional, national, and international levels, contributing to the evaluation and development of clinical guidelines and enhancing personalized treatment approaches. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06115200: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06115200 WHO Trial Registration Data Set available at https://trialsearch.who.int/Trial2.aspx?TrialID=NCT06115200