A Study To Determine The Economic Impact Of Major Depressive Disorder In Colombia

Abstract

Giving to the burden disease evaluated by Peñaloza et al. (2014), in Colombia the major depressive disorder represented the second disease with most DALYs for both genders in all age groups. Due to this result we decided to determine the economic cost of major depressive disorder in Colombia from the third-payer and patient perspectives for year 2011. MethOds: We used the official SISPRO data to get information regarding the number of visits per patient who had a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. To calculate the monetary costs, we assumed that a treatment was provided to every patient reported on the system according to the study of Pinto et al. (2010) and from the SOAT fare manual 2011 reported by the government. We multiplied the treatment cost for each patient by the total number of registers to obtain the third-payer cost. We calculated from the patient´s perspective the lost output as a result of a reduction of productivity due to major depressive disorder, using the DALYs adjusted by life expectancy, multiplied by the 2011 current GDP divided by the working-age population. Results: The total Economic impact for 2011 was USD 454.955.680. This is the result of adding the third-payer cost of USD 449.338.332 plus the patient cost of USD 5.617.347. cOnclusiOns: With this approximation to the economic impact of the major depressive disorder the government can design cost-effective mental health policies to reduce its prevalence for Colombia's population, especially for women. The cost of major depressive disorder represents 0.14% of 2011 current GDP, this means that on average there is an expenditure of USD 9.88 for each Colombian citizen to prevent the disease. Those numbers shows the importance to generate permanent public policies to improve the Colombians´ mental health.