Health economics evidence informs health-care decision making, but the field has historically paid insufficient attention to mental health. Economic evaluations in health should define an appropriate scope for benefits and costs and how to value them. This Health Policy provides an overview of these processes and considers to what extent they capture the value of mental health. We suggest that although current practices are both transparent and justifiable, they have distinct limitations from the perspective of mental health. Most social value judgements, such as the exclusion of interindividual outcomes and intersectoral costs, diminish the value of improving mental health, and this reduction in value might be disproportionate compared with other types of health. Economic analyses might have disadvantaged interventions that improve mental health compared with physical health, but research is required to test the size of such differential effects and any subsequent effect on decision-making systems such as health technology assessment systems. Collaboration between health economics and the mental health sciences is crucial for achieving mental–physical health parity in evaluative frameworks and, ultimately, improving population mental health.

健康经济学证据为医疗保健决策提供信息，但该领域历来对心理健康关注不够。健康方面的经济评估应确定效益和成本的适当范围以及如何评估它们。本健康政策概述了这些过程，并考虑了它们在多大程度上体现了心理健康的价值。我们认为，尽管目前的做法既透明又合理，但从心理健康的角度来看，它们具有明显的局限性。大多数社会价值判断，例如排除个体间结果和部门间成本，都会降低改善心理健康的价值，并且与其他类型的健康相比，这种价值的降低可能不成比例。与身体健康相比，经济分析可能对改善心理健康的干预措施不利，但需要进行研究来测试这种差异效应的大小以及对卫生技术评估系统等决策系统的任何后续影响。卫生经济学和心理健康科学之间的合作对于在评估框架中实现身心健康平等并最终改善人口心理健康至关重要。