According to a recent study in the British Medical Journal, the mortality rate among those with both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder increased between 1999 and 2006. Not only this, but the relative mortality of those with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder increased during that time, meaning that people with those mental illnesses are dying at an increasingly faster rate than the rest of the population. The study looked at the mortality rates of people in their first year after a hospital discharge and compared it with the population at large. The mortality rate rose from 1.3 times that of the general population to 1.9 times that of the general population. Although there was a higher gap for violent deaths, there was also a gap for non-violent deaths.
Commentary
I have no especially good theories about why this is happening, but whatever is happening, it is worrisome. It is at least
possible that there is a mere correlation here. For instance, cutbacks in who is hospitalized would mean that those who
are hospitalized are already worse off, leading to an increase in the rate of those who are released actually dying within the first year. On the other hand, it could show that something in the care of the mentally ill has changed significantly enough in Britain that mortality rates increased by almost 50% within seven years. It is unfortunate to see, as it is easy to think that treatment for mental illnesses is gradually “developing”. However, this and other statistics show a lot of increasing problems as well.
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