The economic costs of mental illness have never been easy to pin down.1 The costs of mental health care can be estimated much the way we estimate other health care costs. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, cites a cost of $57.5B in 2006 for mental health care in the U.S., equivalent to the cost of cancer care.2 But unlike cancer, much of the economic burden of mental illness is not the cost of care, but the loss of income due to unemployment, expenses for social supports, and a range of indirect costs due to a chronic disability that begins early in life.
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report last week from the World Economic Forum (WEF) attempts to capture the costs of several classes of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and projects the economic burden through 2030. Recognizing there is no ideal method, the authors adopted three approaches to estimate global economic burden: (a) a standard cost of illness method, (b) macroeconomic simulation, and (c) the value of a statistical life. The results of all three methods project staggering costs over the next two decades, with cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, cancer, diabetes, and mental health representing a cumulative output loss of $47T, roughly 75% of the global GDP in 2010.3
The WHO has already reported that mental illnesses are the leading causes of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) worldwide, accounting for 37% of healthy years lost from NCDs.4 Depression alone accounts for one third of this disability.5 The new report estimates the global cost of mental illness at nearly $2.5T (two-thirds in indirect costs) in 2010, with a projected increase to over $6T by 2030. What does $2.5T or $6T mean? The entire global health spending in 2009 was $5.1T. The annual GDP for low-income countries is less than $1T. The entire overseas development aid over the past 20 years is less than $2T.3
