Global "burden of disease"-study for psychiatric disorders

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study was conducted to provide a set of summary health measures that would be comprehensive and make available information on disease and injury, including non-fatal health outcomes. The main objective of the GBD approach was to inform global priority setting for health research and to influence international health policy and planning. One of the summary measures used was the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY). DALYs are a common metric for fatal and non-fatal health outcomes and are based on years of life lost because of premature death (YLL) and years of life lived with disability (YLD). Thus DALYs = YLL + YLD or Burden = Mortality + Disability. Therefore, a DALY is one lost year of healthy life. The DALY methodology provides a way to link information on disease burden to cost-effectiveness analysis. This feature would assist comparative assessments. The WHO plans to refine this framework for assessing the outcomes of interventions and their related costs.