Schizophrenia is one of the most common severe mental illnesses, affecting more than 24 million people worldwide. Despite progress in medicine and methods of treatment available for this disease, the schizophrenia treatment options are still not satisfied, and the emergence of the disease is still not fully explained. For patients, their families, caregivers, and physicians, an important first step to improve this situation would be to develop treatments with higher efficacy against all types of symptoms of schizophrenia and lower therapy cost. In 2010 year, social insurance benefits related to disability in patients with schizophrenia were more than 940 million polish currency. The main component of expenses was disability pension, which accounted for 98% of expenditure. Schizophrenia can lead to “double” expenditures from the state budget: on the one hand, badly controlled schizophrenia is expensive hospitalizations, burden the budget of the National Health Fund (NHF) and the burden of public budget expenditure for the benefits associated with the inability to work. In 2009 year, expenditures on benefits relating to disability in patients with schizophrenia NHF expenditures twice exceeded, for fund the care of patients with schizophrenia. Focusing on maintaining social roles, by timely implementation of psycho-socio-medical interventions, by activating and improving the independence of patients can reduce the number of hospitalizations and reduce the load on indirect costs.

Key words: schizophrenia, pharmacoeconomics, social problem.