Estimates of global spending and financing of mental health

Abstract

SummaryThis paper illustrates the wide variation in the spending and financing of mental health services around the globe. As would be expected, mental health spending in high-income countries is a larger percent of overall health care spending, which in the United States, United Kingdom, and France is about 10% of health care spending, compared to countries such as Japan, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, where the spending is around 6%. In OECD countries, mental health spending is approximately 7.4% of total health care spending. Our analysis of the relationship between per capita spending on mental health and per capita income shows that the elasticity of mental health spending is 0.49, suggesting that a 10% change in per capita income produces a 4.9% increase in mental health spending per capita. In LMIC, we found that the spending levels for mental health was approximately 1–2% of the total health care budget. The dominant payer for mental health services throughout the globe still appears to be that of the government sector. The case studies that we present in Korea, Spain, and Ghana show dramatically different approaches to the financing and spending of mental health.