Abstract
Background: Schizophrenia is a disabling mental disorder with high prevalence and that usually requires long-term follow-up and expensive lifelong treatment. The cost of schizophrenia treatment consumes a significant amount of the health services' budget in western countries.Objective: The aim of the study was to find out about the costs related to schizophrenia across different european countries and compare them.Results: Schizophrenia treatment costs an estimated 18 billion euros annually worldwide. The direct costs associated with medical help are only part of the total expenditure. The indirect costs are an equally (or even more)important part of the total cost. These expenses are related to the lack of productivity of schizophrenic patients and the cost that relatives have to bear as a result of taking care of their affected relatives.Conclusions: Although data on the cost of schizophrenia may vary slightly between different european countries, the general conclusion that can be drawn is that schizophrenia is a very costly disorder. Not only because of direct costs related to medical procedures, but also due to the non-medical (indirect) costs. Together this suggests the need to investigate cost-efficient strategies that could provide a better outcome for schizophrenic patients, as well as the people who care for them.
Highlights
Why is schizophrenia such a costly disease? Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric condition that affects around 1% of the population worldwide[1,2,3,4]
The research data for this article was collected by the use of the PubMed database in April 2015, having used key words: “schizophrenia costs in Europe”, “(indirect and direct costs) schizophrenia”, “schizophrenia costs worldwide”, “schizophrenia costs United States”, “schizophrenia and disability”, “antipsychotic treatment in Europe” as a part of the abstract, title or included anywhere in the whole paper
We did exclude the earliest data (Australia 1976; USA 1975, 1985; Netherlands 1989) since we found them irrelevant
Summary
Why is schizophrenia such a costly disease? Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric condition that affects around 1% of the population worldwide[1,2,3,4]. All of the above factors lead to the high costs associated with the treatment of schizophrenia and related to social impairment[3,7] By these we mean the inability to work and the way that schizophrenia affects the patientsenvironment. The indirect costs are an (or even more)important part of the total cost These expenses are related to the lack of productivity of schizophrenic patients and the cost that relatives have to bear as a result of taking care of their affected relatives. Because of direct costs related to medical procedures, and due to the non-medical (indirect) costs Together this suggests the need to investigate cost-efficient strategies that could provide a better outcome for schizophrenic patients, as well as the people who care for them
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