What? Is it possible that not all of us labeled with mental illness actually need meds for the rest of our lives? See this abstract. If anyone has access to the article please let me know.
And here we see that psychiatric patients die 25 years earlier than other people.
Adults with serious mental illness treated in public systems die about 25 years earlier than Americans overall, a gap that’s widened since the early ’90s when major mental disorders cut life spans by 10 to 15 years, according to a report due Monday.
This study gives this fact further support. This is the result and conclusion:
During a 17-year follow-up, 39 of the 99 people with schizophrenia died. Adjusted for age and gender, the relative mortality risk between those with schizophrenia and others was 2.84 (95% CI 2.06–3.90), and was 2.25 (95% CI1.61–3.15) after further adjusting for somatic diseases, bloodpressure,cholesterol, body mass index, smoking, exercise, alcohol intake and education. The number of neuroleptics used at the time of the baseline survey showed a graded relation to mortality. Adjusted for age, gender, somatic diseases and other potential risk factors for premature death, the relative risk was 2.50 (95% CI1.46–4.30) per increment of one neuroleptic.
It’s the neuroleptics, stupid.
Seems like maybe we really should think about alternatives to neuroleptics, wouldn’t you say?
Fear of brain meds kept me from trying them out in life, even though they were prescribed to me several times. But at some point, after reading/listening to many people’s experience with them, I realized that my steadfast refusal was probably one of the few good decisions on my part.