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Costing mental health services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Martin Knapp  and
Jeni Beecham
Martin Knapp*
Affiliation:
Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent at Canterbury
Jeni Beecham
Affiliation:
Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent at Canterbury
*
1Address for correspondence: Professor Martin Knapp, Personal Social Services Research Unit, Cornwallis Building, The University, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF.
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Synopsis

In this paper four principal topics are addressed: (a) the policy and political contexts in which demands arise for cost information; (b) the nature and phasing of those demands; (c) the basic rules of empirical costs research for meeting those demands; and (d) concomitant implications for the design, execution and interpretation of their research. Mental health care policy or practice changes which ignore costs, or which embody cost information without obeying or recognizing the four basic rules, can only be of dubious validity, or can only be used to answer a limited range of questions. But, as the illustrative studies show, it need not be an horrendous, or ideologically compromising or scientifically complex task to add a cost dimension to the evaluation of mental health services. There are enough examples in the literature of bad costs research to demonstrate that it is not as simple as some people think, but there are also enough examples of good research t o encourage further attempts.

Type
Orginal Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 1990 , pp. 893 - 908
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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