The Societal Cost of Schizophrenia: A Systematic Review

Cost-of-illness (COI) studies provide useful information on the economic burden that schizophrenia imposes on a society.

This study aims to give a general overview of COI studies for schizophrenia and to compare the societal cost of schizophrenia across countries. It also aims to identify the main cost components of schizophrenia and factors associated with higher societal cost to improve the quality and reporting of COI studies for schizophrenia.

We performed an electronic search on multiple databases (MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Health Management Information Consortium [HMIC] and the System for Information on Grey Literature [openSIGLE]) to identify COI studies of schizophrenia published between 1996 and 2016. The primary outcome of this review was societal cost per schizophrenia patient, by cost component. All costs were converted to $US, year 2015 values.

We included 19 studies in this review. The annual societal cost per patient varied from $US5818 in Thailand to $US94,587 in Norway; whereas the lifetime societal cost per patient was estimated to be $US988,264 in Australia (all year 2015 values). The main cost drivers were direct healthcare costs and productivity losses. Factors associated with higher individual costs included patient demographics, severity of disease and methods used to calculate the costs of productivity losses and comorbidities.

This review highlights the large economic burden of schizophrenia. The magnitude of the cost estimates differs considerably across countries, which might be caused by different economic conditions and healthcare systems and widespread methodological heterogeneity among COI studies. Proposed recommendations based on this review can be used to improve the consistency and comparability of COI studies for schizophrenia.