Economic Value of Informal Mental Health Caring
2017
Caregivers, family and friends play a significant role in supporting people with mental illness, and it has long been recognized that informal carers constitute a significant ‘hidden’ workforce in Australia. Faced as Australia is with an ageing population and burgeoning chronic disease, data on the contribution that carers make and the consequent savings to governments and other ‘payers’ need to be articulated. This report attempts to put a ‘value’ on informal caring for those with mental illness.
The results showed there were an estimated 2.8 million informal carers in Australia in 2015, of whom around 240,000 were mental health carers. These people provided an estimated 208 million hours of informal care per year to people with mental illness, the equivalent of 173,000 full time equivalent FTE formal support workers. Even adjusting for some cost offsets of over $1 billion, the total annual replacement cost for all informal mental health carers in 2015 would have been $13.2 billion.
Economic Value of Informal Mental Health Caring
Source:
Diminic S, Hielscher E, Lee YY et al. The Economic Value of Informal Mental Health Caring. Mind Australia, University of Queensland 2017. https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/241101/sub427-mental-health-attachment2.pdf