Mentally Ill Patients Have High Risk for Cardiovascular Disease

A report from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that patients with severe psychiatric illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression are at a high risk for cardiovascular disease and can lose from 25 to 30 years of life expectancy, when compared to the general population. While there is a higher than average incidence of suicide in psychiatric patients, most of the early deaths can be traced to cardiovascular disease.

The researchers say that there are several different factors that can lead to this increased risk such as less access to the right kind of medical care. Disorders such as these also make it hard for a person to learn and then find and hold a job, so they tend to have lower incomes, and diets that tend to be high in fast food. Also, people who have serious psychiatric problems are more likely to be smokers with from 50 to 80% smoking cigarettes.

Then there is the factor of the medications they need to take that contribute to weight gain. They do this by making the patients less active and some of the drugs stimulate the appetite.

With the issue of preventive care, there was a study done with 1,500 chronic schizophrenia patients called the National Institute of Mental Health-funded Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) study. It showed that 88% of patients who came into the study with high cholesterol were not taking any lipid-lowering drugs. There was another 30% who had diabetes who were not taking any anti diabetes medicine and 62% with high blood pressure were not taking any medications for that condition either.

Not only that but, patients with severe psychiatric illness are less likely to be screened for any of those diseases, despite all of the evidence that points to the side effects from the medications that they take.