A third limitation concerns the limitation to measure intangible costs and the related difficulty of accurately quantifying quality of life for children’s mental health and their families. The suffering from a mental illness of children and families are likely to be costly but extremely difficult to evaluate and assign a monetary value, restricting evaluation to accurately measure the relative merits of interventions, which may lead to a substantial underestimation of the effectiveness of interventions. These factors may serve to limit the validity of cost-effectiveness trials in children’s mental health care. Finally, it is often important to determine the time frame during which costs and benefits accrue, since the current value of benefits
