Contradictory to our assumption and the idea of greater symptom severity in SAD, we
found no statistically significant difference in pharmaceutical costs between patients with SZ
and SAD. But, we found a statistically significant difference in mean personnel costs between
both diagnostic groups. On the one hand, we had still expected a difference in allocated pharmaceutical
treatment resources given as SAD patients might show more severe affective and
negative symptoms. However, SAD patients also have higher levels of cognitive and social
functioning when compared to SZ . These patients’ characteristics in the SAD could
account for better integration in a social community and a higher level of social interactionpossibly balancing the pharmaceutical treatment costs. On the other hand, psychomotor agitation,
aggression and disorganized behavior at the admission might require additional personal
involvement and higher costs for combined inpatient treatment needed for SAD patients .
These symptoms assumedly cause a higher rate of intensive treatment in acute care wards. This
difference in treatment context could also account for differences in infrastructure costs in the
treatment of SAD patients.