Comorbid Mental Illness Is Associated with Doubled Healthcare Costs in Patients with Chronic Disease

Patients with chronic disease have a higher prevalence of comorbid mental illness than do other patients. To evaluate the healthcare costs associated with comorbid mental illness, researchers quantified costs in a population-based cohort of all adult residents of Alberta, Canada, who had at least one of the following chronic diseases: asthma, congestive heart failure, myocardial infarction, diabetes, epilepsy, hypertension, chronic pulmonary disease, or chronic kidney disease. Nearly 1 million such patients were identified, of whom about 16% also had coded mental illness diagnoses (i.e., depression, schizophrenia, alcohol use disorder, or drug use disorder).

Unadjusted 3-year mean healthcare costs for patients with and without mental illness…