Background and Aims:
Mental health services are largely outpatient treatment, prescription medication, or a combination of both. Mood disorders place substantial clinical, social and economic burdens on individuals with the disorders, as well as on their families and wider society. The aim of this study is to evaluate the costs associated to psychiatric care in patients admitted to the Psychiatry Department of the Emergency County Hospital Cluj- Napoca and diagnosed with mood disorders.
Methods:
We performed a retrospective analysis of the total number of patients admitted in 2017 and diagnosed with mood disorders. Several variables (sex, age, ICD-10 diagnosis, history, length of the hospitalization, total cost/admission, comorbidities, suicide attempts and treatment) were taken into account.
Results:
19.4% of a total of n=3483 patients were diagnosed with mood disorders. The highest rates for admissions were in May and September. The total health care cost for the aforementioned category was 4.5M RON. Medication and paraclinical tests generated only 5,84% of total costs, the rest being allocated for food and accommodation. Patients with mood disorders had a mean hospitalization of 15.5 days/patient. For patients older than 65 years, the hospitalization period was significantly longer than for younger patients (p=0.01), generating significantly higher costs (p=0.02).
Conclusions:
Mood disorders have a major impact on patients' functionality. An adequate treatment for out-patients and the improvement of therapeutic adherence for these severe psychiatric disorders could generate a better cost- efficiency rate. At the same time, the scarcity of healthcare resources necessitates the efficiency of alternative treatments to be examined.

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF MOOD DISORDERS IN ROMANIAN PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS