This chapter discusses the role of health economics in the field of child psychiatry. We start with an overview of the cost implications of child and adolescent mental health problems across a range of health, social care and other sectors, and provide evidence for the long-term cost consequences of child and adolescent mental health problems as individuals move into adulthood. We then describe the types of methods used for the economic evaluation of interventions and treatments for young people with mental health problems (cost-offset, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility and cost-benefit analysis). We consider the relevance of economic evidence both for professional practice and for strategic decisions about how to allocate available resources so as to get more out of them (in terms of – for example – better outcomes for children and families, or a fairer distribution of access or use of services), and about the incentives needed to help achieve those allocations.
Knapp et al. (Wed,) studied this question.