Expenditures on antidepressants

Question

Is there any data available on how much Canadians spend on antidepressants in a year?

Answers

Answer 1:

I am not sure Statistics Canada is the best source for this sort of data... I did perform a few searches, but the results are far from
impressive.

Result # 1)

CANSIM Table 203-0008 -- Survey of household spending (SHS), household spending on health care, by province and territory, annual

One section is called: Medicinal and pharmaceutical products (Prescription medicines _and_ Other non-prescription medicines and pharmaceutical products).

As you can see, this is a very broad category and may be a poor indication of antidepressant expenditure.

Result # 2)

CANSIM Table 301-0006 - Principal statistics for manufacturing industries, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), annual (dollars unless otherwise noted)

Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing [3254]
Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing [32541]
Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing [325410]

Although you can get revenues from this table, extreme caution should be used.

1) This is for a broad category of pharmeceuticals and medicine - antidepressants is only one part
2) The manufacture's price may not be the retail price and could under estimate the revenues/sales.
3) Some of the product could be exported and would not be reflective of the Canadian consumption model.
4) There may be additional issues with this proposed option....

Answer 2:

CIHI has a Drug Spending Database:
http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=spend_e#drug
Who is authorized to access?

Drug Expenditure in Canada: including very aggregate data.
http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=AR_80_E
Drug expenditure data in this report are obtained from the National Health Expenditure Database (NHEX) maintained by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). Drug expenditure data in NHEX are macro-level data and do not allow for decomposition of prescription costs or drug classes.

For a general overview:
http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/products/Drug_Expenditure_in_Canada_2006_final_web.pdf

Answer 3:

STC does not have that detailed information on antidepressant. CIHI collects the information on prescription but I don't think that you will get from them the details on antidepressant (unless they would do this request as a custom request).