Hiring mental health professionals: Evidence from a large-scale policy in Brazil

Matías Mrejen and Rudi Rocha

Labour Economics, 2025, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact of a policy that promoted the hiring of mental health professionals in public healthcare services in Brazil by exploiting the staggered adoption of the program across municipalities. We find large positive effects on the employment of non-medical health professionals in healthcare facilities and on their production outputs, along with smaller effects on psychiatrist employment and dispensation of drugs. Lower scarcity of non-medical health professionals in the local labor market was associated with greater hiring effects, while substitution of incumbent workers and spillovers across health facilities, sectors and regions did not play any significant role. Despite hiring efforts, however, no significant impact is observed on related mortality, hospitalizations, or sick leave days. Results suggest an increased availability of employed skilled professionals might not be enough to curb more extreme adverse health outcomes.

Keywords: Healthcare workers; Skilled professionals; Mental health; Health outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 J44 J48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537125000521
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:94:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000521

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102728

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().