Lathe, James Grant;
(2025)
From Margins to Mainstream: Revising Health Economics for Mental Health Equity and Societal Value.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis investigates critical issues in applied mental health economics across five chapters. Chapter 1 provides a background in mental health economics, highlighting the global rise in mental health disorders, the disparity between the burden of these disorders and the funding allocated to their research and treatment, and the necessity for evaluative methods that are sensitive to mental health’s unique characteristics. Chapter 2 critiques current economic evaluations, arguing they might inadequately capture the true societal value of mental health. It calls for comprehensive evaluation methods that consider spillover effects and patient values. Chapter 3 utilises dynamic panel methods to estimate the intersectoral costs of mental and physical health improvements. It showcases the utility of advanced econometric methods in observational data to address relevant topics in health economics research. It also demonstrates the necessity for long-term data to enhance the robustness of these findings and suggests future research directions. Chapter 4 presents a detailed visual framework to standardise terminology and elucidate the mechanisms of interindividual health spillovers. Chapter 5 summarises the key takeaways of the previous chapters and discusses the two distinct priorities identified by this thesis for advancing research and policy. First, improving the capture of multi-sectoral spillovers, and second, considering the relevance of interindividual spillovers to the decision rules of economic evaluations in health. Overall, this thesis calls for a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to ensure that methods for economic evaluations adequately characterise the societal value of improving mental health.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | From Margins to Mainstream: Revising Health Economics for Mental Health Equity and Societal Value |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205146 |
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