The Economic Value of New Treatments for Depression

抑郁症是一种在全国范围内普遍存在的慢性疾病，并与高度损害有关。在过去的二十年里，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，并可能对个人和 他们的幸福。新的治疗方法也比旧的药物更昂贵，而且与支出的显着增加有关。这项研究的主要目标是开发实用的、综合衡量治疗抑郁症的新方法的经济价值的方法。我建议在萧条时期衡量创新所产生的经济福利 通过估计需求系统，明确说明提供精神卫生保健的一些独特特征来进行治疗。根据需求估计，将构建治疗抑郁症的几种常用的福利收益衡量标准。有几种相互竞争的方法来衡量创新带来的福利变化，需求侧方法是其中之一。使用需求侧方法的福利收益将与替代方案进行比较 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.