The Cost-Effectiveness of Psychotherapy: A Guide for Practitioners, Researchers, and Policymakers

Now, in response to skyrocketing costs and private sector forces, is a handbook designed to help psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, health care policymakers, and economists evaluate and develop evidence of the cost effectiveness of psychotherapy relative to other interventions. It will help readers better understand psychotherapy utilization, practice, costs, and outcomes in "real world" settings. What makes this handbook extremely useful is its detailed discussion of major cost centers in psychiatry on a disorder-by-disorder basis.

Based on the work of some of the world's most distinguished mental-health investigators, Cost Effective Psychotherapy provides information on the growth of psychotherapy; who uses treatment; who provides the care, what psychotherapy costs and where it is delivered; The efficacy, effectiveness, and cost effectiveness of diagnosis-specific therapies; The relative cost-effectiveness of combination (psychosocial and pharmacologic) treatments; Psychotherapy utilization in single-payer health-care systems; Key research instruments pertinent to economic analysis; Ethical considerations implicated in cost-effectiveness studies; Coming research strategies -- beyond clinical trials; Methodologic pitfalls in economic studies; A Blueprint for clinical/services/economics psychosocial research agenda for the coming century.

The book also will be of great value to those professionals in business, health policy, and economics. They will benefit from the coverage on psychotherapy and combination treatments, systematic reviews of key diagnostic cost-centers in psychiatry, evidence on efficacy and effectiveness across psychiatry, comparisons of single-payer health systems, and the careful review of the field of measurement and economic approaches.