Managing Mental Health undertakes a statistical analysis of OECD countries between 1995 and 2016 to investigate the relationship between spending on healthcare, social spending and population-level mental health outcomes. This paper conducts country-level multivariate modelling using publicly available cross-section and time-series panel data, finding that greater social spending relative to spending on direct healthcare provision is associated with better population health outcomes as measured by deaths recorded due to mental disorders. The implications of this are that OECD countries may be able to significantly improve population mental health by allocating more funding to social services rather than healthcare provision.
