Health and economic evaluation in schizophrenia: implications for health policies.

Programmes for controlling health care costs and improving the quality of care are going to be developed in some countries, with the development of health services research and outcome evaluation. The reliable and comprehensive evaluation of the specific health and economic picture of each illness as well as of the health care results and costs savings related to the treatments or coordination of treatments requires close, interdisciplinary collaboration between the clinician and the health economist. The production and diffusion of health and economic evaluation results is aimed at informing policy makers, providers, consumers, health technology producers, etc. in order to enable them to do their best choices. The allocation in each country of a significant percentage of the annual health expenditures to economic evaluation in mental health seems important for the international development of this field.