Why the excess mortality from psychiatric illness?

The gap in life expectancy from preventable physical illness in psychiatric patients in Western Australia: retrospective analysis of population based registers

OBJECTIVE To examine the mortality experience of psychiatric patients in Western Australia compared with the general population. DESIGN Population based study. SETTING Western Australia, 1985-2005. PARTICIPANTS Psychiatric patients (292,585) registered with mental health services in Western Australia. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Trends in life expectancy for psychiatric patients compared with...

Death rate from ischaemic heart disease in Western Australian psychiatric patients 1980-1998.

BACKGROUND People with mental illness suffer excess mortality due to physical illnesses. AIMS To investigate the association between mental illness and ischaemic heart disease (IHD) hospital admissions, revascularisation procedures and deaths. METHOD A population-based record-linkage study of 210 129 users of mental health services in Western Australia during 1980-1998. IHD mortality rates,...

Excess mortality, mental illness and global burden of disease.

The epidemiology of excess mortality in people with mental illness.

OBJECTIVE to investigate the burden of excess mortality among people with mental illness in developed countries, how it is distributed, and whether it has changed over time. METHOD we conducted a systematic search of MEDLINE, restricting our attention to peer-reviewed studies and reviews published in English relating to mortality and mental illness. Because of the large number of studies that...

Excess mortality from chronic physical disease in psychiatric patients-the forgotten problem.

Physical and psychiatric symptoms often occur together. In both hospital and primary care the presence of one leads to a worse outcome in the other.' For instance, physical illness has a large, immediate effect on depressive symptoms, while further depressive symptoms are associated with increased subsequent physical morbidity. Among all outcomes, it is the increase in mortality that is of most...