Background Treatments and organizational changes supported by eHealth are beginning to play an important role in improving disease treatment outcome and providing cost-efficient care management. “Improvehealth.eu” is a novel eHealth service to support the treatment of patients with depressive disorder. It offers active patient engagement and collaborative care management by combining Web- and mobile-based information and communication technology systems and access to care managers.Objectives Our objective was to assess the feasibility of a novel eHealth service.Methods The intervention—the “Improvehealth.eu” service—was explored in the course of a pilot study comparing two groups of patients receiving treatment as usual and treatment as usual with eHealth intervention. We compared patients’ medication adherence and outcome measures between both groups and additionally explored usage and overall perceptions of the intervention in intervention group.Results The intervention was successfully implemented in a pilot with 46 patients, of whom 40 were female. Of the 46 patients, 25 received treatment as usual, and 21 received the intervention in addition to treatment as usual. A total of 55% (12/25) of patients in the former group and 45% (10/21) in the latter group finished the 6-month pilot. Available case analysis indicated an improvement of adherence in the intervention group (odds ratio [OR] = 10.0, P = .03). Intention-to-treat analysis indicated an improvement of outcome in the intervention group (ORs ranging from 0.35 to 18; P values ranging from .003 to .20), but confidence intervals were large due to small sample sizes. Average duration of use of the intervention was 107 days. The intervention was well received by 81% (17/21) of patients who reported feeling actively engaged, in control of their disease, and that they had access to a high level of information. In all, 33% (7/21) of the patients also described drawbacks of the intervention, mostly related to usability issues.Conclusions The results of this pilot study indicate that the intervention was well accepted and helped the patients in the course of treatment. The results also suggest the potential of the intervention to improve both medication adherence and outcome measures of treatment, including reduction of depression severity and patients becoming “healthy.”

Marital status change represents a risk factor for suicidal behavior. The first year after the change is critical for elevated suicidal risk, in particular for older people.

Objectives: Different types of marital status are associated with elevated/decreased suicidal risk. The aim of this research was to study marital status change and the effect of its recency in relation to suicidal behaviour. Method: Suicide victims (1614) in Slovenia and matched controls (4617) were compared for incidence and recency of marital status change during the last five years in their lives. Results: 10.7% of suicide victims have had a marital status change in the last 5 years as compared to 5.6% of the controls. Becoming widowed and getting divorced proved to be a risk factor for suicidal behaviour. 45,7% of all marital status changes in suicide victims occurred in the last year prior to suicide, whereas marital status changes in the control group were equally distributed over the five years. Recency of marital status change significantly affected suicide risk in interaction with age and type of change: The increase in the risk was much higher for recently married than for the recently divorced or widowed people. Conclusions: Becoming widowed or divorced represents a risk factor for suicidal behaviour. The first year after the change is critical for elevated suicidal risk, in particular for the supposedly positive change of getting married.