BACKGROUND: The concern with the health and the benefits of the therapeutical ones to the patient continues being the focus of the medicine, but to know the costs involved and to make the management of the available resources are basic in the present time. OBJECTIVE: This article reviews some concepts used in the pharmacoeconomics studies such as types of costs (direct, indirect, intangible costs), types of economic analyses as well as the burden of illness. METHOD: Search at Medline database of the main pharmacoeconomics studies carried out on schizophrenia. RESULTS: We had been detailing studies on costs in the schizophrenia developed in USA in 2002, Canada in 2004 and England 2004/2005, as well as the single Brazilian study carried out in 1998. CONCLUSION: The studies show a heavy burden-of-illness in schizophrenia for the society, alerting for the importance of these findings to the economic questions and of politics of health.
Schizophrenia; economic evaluation; burden-of-illness; cost-off-illness
