Hard to Measure the Real Cost of Depression

Depression is an expensive illness. It costs us friends and harms relationships. It costs many patients a decent quality of life. It costs families, who struggle to deal with the depression of a loved one. There are even costs in the workplace in terms of lost productivity. And it costs a lot of out-of-pocket cash for those of us who get treatment for depression, but don’t have good insurance. Consider my costs for a moment:

I pay $130 every time I walk into my therapist’s office; which happens twice a month when I’m doing well but once a week when I’m struggling. That’s more than my car note.

Good Depression Treatment Costs a Lot of Money

I take Abilify, which isn’t covered under my Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance. The insurance costs me $500 a month in premiums but doesn’t seem to cover anything. My Abilify tab? Try over $600 a month. For the mathematically challenged, that’s $7,200 a year. Or a really nice vacation. And that doesn’t count the expense of my Cymbalta prescription.

My psychiatrist who prescribes those depression medications is not covered under my health insurance either, so I pay him out-of-pocket for every visit, too.

When Treating Depression, It Doesn’t Pay To Be Thrifty

As financially painful as those expenses can be, I learned a hard lesson this summer. It doesn’t pay to skimp on your mental health.

As I shared before in this space, this past summer, I suffered through the darkest, deepest and most dangerous bout of severe depression I have ever faced. It’s not possible to pinpoint a single cause of that awful episode. But I know that one bad financial decision helped push me down the slippery slope of depression. I got anxious when my pharmacist told me that Blue Cross/Blue Shield was no longer covering the antidepressant I was taking at the time (Lexapro).

I faced a choice: Cough up a considerable amount of cash or switch to a cheaper, generic med for Celexa. I hadn’t been exactly feeling like a rock star on the Lexapro anyway, so I decided if I was going to feel crappy one way or the other, I might as well feel crappy and save a couple hundred bucks. Big mistake! Within a few months, I had lost about 15 pounds and fallen into an abyss far worse than any other I’ve experienced. My family had an intervention of sorts and made me promise to never, ever, forsake my mental health to save a few bucks again. That’s why I now take Cymbalta and Abilify and still see my therapist despite the cost.

You Can’t Put Price on Mental Health

The lesson learned? You can’t put a price on your mental health. I ended up missing more than a week of work while I went to get help.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, I’m not the only one. NAMI says depression costs the workplace a staggering $34 billion in direct and indirect costs each year. Major depression, NAMI adds, “is associated with more annual sick days and higher rates of short-term disability than other chronic diseases.”

I have no idea how NAMI arrived at the $34 billion figure, but it makes sense. Depressed people miss more work. Depressed people are less productive when they are at work. Depression caregivers, who surely get the blues and probably feel exhausted, suffer at work too.

So take it from me. You can’t put a price on good mental health. I might go broke, but that’s better than the misery of full-blown depression.