The Economic Value of New Treatments for Depression

抑郁症是全国范围内普遍存在的慢性疾病，与严重的损伤有关。过去二十年来，抑郁症的药物治疗取得了非凡的进展。这些药物的引入改变了美国治疗抑郁症的方式，可能对个人和患者产生巨大影响。 他们的福祉。新疗法也比旧药物更昂贵，并且与支出显着增加有关。这项研究的主要目标是开发实用的、总体的措施来衡量治疗抑郁症的新方法的经济价值。我建议衡量萧条时期创新所产生的经济福利 通过估计需求系统来提供治疗，该系统明确考虑了提供精神卫生保健的一些独特特征。根据需求估计，将构建几种用于治疗抑郁症的常用福利增益衡量标准。有几种相互竞争的方法来衡量创新带来的福利变化，需求方方法就是其中之一。使用需求方方法的福利收益将与替代方法进行比较 措施。

Depression is a prevalent chronic condition nationally and is associated with high levels of impairment. Extraordinary advances have been achieved in the last two decades in the pharmacological treatment of deppression. The introduduction of these agents has altered the way in which depression is treated in the US and may have a large impact of individuals and their well-being. New treatments are also more expensive than older medications and are associated with remarkable increases in spending. The principal goal of this research is to develop practical, aggregate measures of the economic value of new methods for treating depression. I propose to measure the economic welfare generated by innovation in depression treatment by estimating a demand system that explicitly accounts for some unique features of the delivery of mental health care. From the demand estimates, several types of commonly used measures of welfare gain for the treatment of depression will be constructed. There are several competing approaches to measuring welfare change from innovation, of which the demand side approach is one. Welfare gains using the demand side approach will be compared to alternative measures.