At other times, the focus is on care in specialized mental health settings, primary health care, schools, the criminal justice system, and even the streets. A mainstream public health and population-based perspective demands such a broad view of mental health and mental illness. The costs of mental illness are exceedingly high. Although the question of cost is discussed more fully in Chapter 6, a few of the central findings are presented here. This figure represents 7.3 percent of total health spending.
Direct costs correspond to spending for treatment and rehabilitation nationwide.
When economists calculate the costs of an illness, they also strive to identify indirect costs. Indirect costs can be defined in different ways, but here they refer to lost productivity at the workplace, school, and home due to premature death or disability. More than 80 percent of these costs stemmed from disability rather than death because mortality from mental disorders is relatively low. Epidemiologic data in this report follow that convention.