Understanding healthcare burden and treatment patterns among young adults with schizophrenia

Background: Schizophrenia is a serious public health problem that affects ∼1% of the US population. Aims: To examine treatment patterns and evaluate healthcare resource utilization (HRU) and costs among young adults (18-35 years) with schizophrenia who were early in the disease. Materials and methods: Patients aged 18-64 years with ≥2 schizophrenia diagnoses in the identification period (January 1, 2012-September 30, 2015) and continuous enrollment for ≥12 months pre- and post-index date were identified from the OptumInsight Clinformatics DataMart. Demographics, clinical characteristics, HRU, costs, and treatment patterns were compared between schizophrenia and non-schizophrenia "controls" cohorts and between young (18-35 years) and older adults (36-64 years) with schizophrenia. Results: Among 9,889 schizophrenia patients, 23.70% were young adults (aged 18-35), had higher all-cause per-patient-per-year (PPPY) costs ($22,338 vs $7,332; p