People with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses have an increased risk of being diagnosed with cardiovascular disease at a younger age than those who do not have such mental illnesses, according to a new american scientific study.
Previous research has shown that the mentally ill die 10 to 20 years earlier on average than the general population and that the leading cause of death is cardiovascular. The new study is the first to estimate at such a long time (30 years) the cardiovascular risk in a large number of untreated patients diagnosed with severe mental illness (previous studies only treated inpatients).
The researchers, led by Dr. Rebecca Rosom of the Minnesota Institute of HealthPartners, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, analyzed data on nearly 600,000 people aged 18-75, of whom about 11,000 (almost 2%) were diagnosed with a serious mental illness: 70% with bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression), 18% with schizoaffective disorder and 12% with schizophrenia.
It was found that the risk of developing cardiovascular disease over a decade was 9.5% versus 8% in the mentally healthy, while at the age of 30 it was 25% versus 11% in the healthy. Increased cardiovascular risk was present even in people 18-34 with mental illness.
Smoking and weight gain were found to be the most important cardiovascular risk factors for the mentally ill, who are three times more likely to be smokers than the mentally healthy (36% vs. 12%), as well as obese (50% vs. 36). %). They are also twice as likely to develop diabetes (14% vs. 7%), which is a cardiovascular risk factor, and are slightly more likely to have hypertension (15% vs. 13%).
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