Friends 'R' Family

ResidentInsomniac · Site Admin

Severe mental illness, more heart risk

LONDON (UPI) -- A British study finds individuals with severe mental illnesses are at higher risk to die from coronary heart disease and stroke, but not cancer.

David P.J. Osborn and colleagues at the Royal Free & University College Medical School in London selected 46,136 individuals with severe mental illness -- including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder and delusional disorder -- and 300,426 without mental illness from a nationally representative database in the United Kingdom.

The researchers compared the two group's death rates from coronary heart disease, stroke and the seven most common types of cancer in the United Kingdom: respiratory, colorectal, breast, prostate, stomach, esophageal and pancreatic cancer.

"We chose to study death rates rather than incidence rates, because mortality is the most robust outcome since it includes diagnoses made post-mortem," the authors write in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Those with severe mental illness ages 18 to 49 were 3.22 times as likely to die from heart disease and 2.53 times as likely to die from stroke; those ages 50 to 75 were 1.86 times more likely to die from heart disease and 1.89 times more likely to die from stroke, and those older than 75 were 1.05 times as likely to die from heart disease and 1.34 times as likely to die from stroke.

Source:
Health & Fitness
ArcaMax Publishing
http://www.arcamax.com