The mental health residential care study: The costs of provision

In the face of concern regarding the provision of mental health residential care, an economic component was incorporated into the design of an epidemiological survey of mental health needs in eight districts. This paper sets out the methods used to undertake the costing component of the study, and describes the accommodation and non-accommodation costs of facilities covered by the survey (n=340) and the people resident within them (n=1904). The costs of accommodation tend to be lowest in the private sector, followed by the voluntary sector. The highest accommodation costs were observed for NHS facilities. This is in contrast to non-accommodation costs, which are lowest for residents in specialised hospital settings and highest for those in community settings with lower levels of on-site support, such as group homes. These cost differences between alternative settings and sectors may reflect different resident, facility and area characteristics, an hypothesis we are testing in a subsequent part of this study.