OBJECTIVES: To collate evidence from published studies evaluating the economic burden of schizophrenia in Europe.

METHODS: A literature search was conducted in EMBASE^® and MEDLINE^® to identify evidence published from 2014 to 2018. The studies were assessed against predefined eligibility criteria. Studies were included if they were published in English and reported the economic burden associated with Schizophrenia within Europe.

RESULTS: Of the 1939 articles screened, 33 studies were included. Across these studies, the burden was assessed in terms of healthcare costs, productivity loss and length of stay (LOS). The total annual cost in Norway and Italy was US$890,413,045 (Evenson et al., 2016) and €2,770,495,280 (Marcellusi et al., 2018), respectively. The average annual cost/patient in Switzerland, Norway and Germany was €39,408 (Pletscher et al., 2015), US$106,014 (Evenson et al., 2016), €11,304 (Frey et al., 2014), respectively. An analysis of a French dataset reported higher costs/patient/year (LOS) for full time hospitalisation compared to day care hospitalisation (€8,319 [27.6 days] vs. €4,397 [25.85 days]) (Laidi et al., 2018). The LOS and hospitalisation costs were greater in Poland (54.64 days and €145,790) than Ukraine (38.43 days and €28,586) (Zaprutko et al., 2017). In Italy, the average hospitalisation cost was €1,128/patient/year, and the LOS/hospital was 18.2 days (Esposti et al., 2014). In the UK, the average loss due to absenteeism was £33.41 amongst patients (Reeder et al., 2014). In the EU5, the average medical costs and loss due to absenteeism by the care givers was €2,258/caregiver/year and €2,457/week, respectively (Gupta et al., 2015). Also, the average cost (mean number) for physician visits, ED visits and hospitalisation cost per caregiver per year was €475 (8.0), €254 (0.9) and €1528 (0.8), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: This review suggested that the total burden of schizophrenia is significant in terms of LOS, healthcare costs and productivity loss despite heterogenous reporting of data.