Peer support in mental health care: is it good value for money?

Marija Trachtenberg, Michael Parsonage, Geoff Shepherd and Jed Boardman

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Peer support workers - people with their own lived experience of mental illness - provide mutually supportive relationships in secondary mental health services. Increasing numbers are being employed, both in this country and elsewhere. But good quality evidence on the effectiveness of this form of service delivery is in short supply and even less is known about its cost-effectiveness. This paper makes a first attempt at assessing whether peer support provides value for money, looking specifically at whether peer support workers can reduce psychiatric inpatient bed use. Because of the very high cost of inpatient care, the savings that result from even small changes in bed use may be sufficient to outweigh the costs of employing peer workers.

JEL-codes: E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2013-06-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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