Adults With Severe Mental Illness die 15 to 20 Years Earlier From Diseases Such as Cancer

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From The Guardian. “Adults with severe mental illness are nearly five times more likely than their peers to die from serious physical diseases before the age of 75, according to research.

The analysis of NHS data by the Rethink Mental Illness charity reveals that people with severe mental health problems die 15-20 years earlier than the wider adult population, largely due to preventable physical conditions.

The findings come before the government’s independent review of mental health, autism and ADHD, which is expected to be published this week and recommend a more holistic approach to supporting patients with these conditions.”

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting, and somehow not very surprising. I wonder if there are ways to dig deeper in that data, especially for polypharmacy and medicines’s side effects. And those could go both ways: are the psychiatric drugs some of the people are prescibed, directly causing e.g. the extra cancers, cardiovascular issues and so on? Or is a mental health label on a customer’s file making the doctors ignore the cancer symproms and testing? Or are e.g. chemo drugs causing also mental health issues, since those too tend to quite heavy on the body.
    Some psych drugs causing e.g. blood pressure issues and T2 diabetes are a well documented phenomenon, as are the reasons why antidepressives’ box carry the black label warnings on suicides.

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  3. My orthostatic intolerance is gone having tapered off clomipramine. Every doctor I went to said it’d just inevitably become POTS and one said “you’ll just be an anxious, ‘fainty’ guy in your late 30’s, then sent me on my way.they all got awful uncomfortable when I mentioned tapering, even though a number of them flagged clomipramine as a likely culprit. Why not stay on a suicidogenic placebo for my own safety??? Clearly that’s the correct course! POTS is miserable and makes you way more injury prone. Now I never have to have that, and it all came from the gloriously irresponsible choice of ignoring MD’s and telling my psychiatrist to F off (a luxury most don’t have).

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