Trends in Mental Health Spending

I don’t know about you, but I just have to wonder when I am picking up a grocery bag full of prescriptions for my family or sorting through the mail filled with insurance statements and doctors’ bills if this is reality or has my family fallen into some alternate reality filled with frantic rabbit doctors, Cheshire cat pharmacists and queen of hearts insurance companies. Could this possibly be right?

According to a research team led by Tami L. Mark, Ph.D. this is actually reality. “We found that mental health expenditures have grown and changed dramatically in their composition over the past 17 years.” Here are some of their key findings for the period 1986 to 2003:

• Mental health treatment expenditures grew from $33 billion to $100 billion
• Spending per capita on mental health treatment rose from $205 to $345
• Retail psychoactive prescription drug expenditures grew from 7% to 23%
• And some good news! - Out-of-pocket payments fell from 23% to 14%

An abstract of this article entitled Mental Health Treatment Expenditure Trends, 1986-2003 is available for free.