Over the last 30 years there has been significant progress in economic evaluations in the mental health area. Two reviews conducted in the late 1990s, undertaken by Cabasés (1) and Evers et al (2), and a subsequent review by Roberts et al (3), were disparaging. Authors found that most mental health care interventions either had not been evaluated or were poorly evaluated (1,2). Issues highlighted ranged from incomplete costs, poor quality econometric analyses and segregation of cost and health outcome information (3). In conducting economic evaluations in the mental health field, researchers and analysts are faced with several challenges, including narrow perspectives, small sample sizes and short follow-up periods (4). Evers et al (2) point to issues with generating evidence, many of which are affiliated with employing randomised controlled trials in the mental health area; the time horizons employed in trials/studies; transferability of results from trial settings, etc. As a result experts have urged researchers and analysts to carefully consider the choice of patient outcome, patient heterogeneity and statistical uncertainty in their data (5).