Background: Twenty-one percent of subjects with depressive disorder (DD) smoke. This prevalence is expected to be related to healthcare resources utilization (HRU) and sick leave, thereby accounting for substantial costs to the National Health System (NHS) and to society that still need to be characterized. The objective was to estimate cost of illness in patients with DD according to their smoking status.
Methods: We used the 2011/2012 National Health Survey to document HRU and lost-workday equivalents (LWDE). Men and women 18+ years old with a DD self-reported to a physician in the past 12 months were categorized into: smokers (daily smokers), former smokers, and never smokers. HRU and LWDE were computed on an annualized basis. Multivariate general linear models adjusted for sex, age, and comorbidities were applied.
Results: Data from 1,816 subjects (381 smokers, 290 former smokers, and 1,145 never smokers) were analyzed. Smokers had higher total per patient annual costs (thousands, €3.14), and higher annual healthcare costs (€2.53) than former smokers (€2.35, p < .1; and €1.93, p < .05) and never smokers (€2.42, p < .05; and €2.06, p < .1): with excess costs of €0.79 and €0.72 for total annual costs and €0.60 and €0.47 for annual healthcare costs (p = .029 and p = .056, respectively).
Conclusions: Smoking DD subjects were associated with higher HRU and costs from both the societal and healthcare perspectives, when compared with former and never smokers in the Spanish general population. Supporting people with DD to quit smoking might therefore be a value-for-money health policy in Spain.
Keywords: Depressive disorder; health policy; healthcare costs; resource utilization; smoking.