People aged 18-74 with serious mental illness have a mortality rate three times as high as the general population, new data from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) show. Though previous research has looked at this area, this is the first time such figures have been calculated by linking mortality data to the [read the full story…]
The prescribing of benzodiazepines and ‘Z drugs’ in general practice in England has stayed pretty consistent or increased slightly over the last 5 years, despite safety warnings about the risks of these drugs. I blogged about this back in May last year when the Department of Health highlighted two new studies by National Addiction Centre [read the full story…]
Regular readers may recall previous blogs where I have written about the dangers associated with antipsychotic drugs in elderly patients. Many of you have responded simply and emotionally on Twitter by saying: “Stop prescribing these drugs!” Others have recognised that the issue is far from clear cut as a fair proportion of patients do have [read the full story…]
People with serious mental illness are still living 15-20 years less than the rest of the population, according to a study from the Nordic countries. The study, published in the December issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, shows that the life expectancy gap has remained largely unchanged over the last 20 years, despite changes [read the full story…]
National policy in England has seen people with learning disabilities who were once residents of long stay hospitals move into community services. There have been many evaluations of these moves, locally and nationally. The authors of this study were interested in measurable factors such as quality of life and mortality. They looked at 521 adults with [read the full story…]
The rates of morbidity and mortality in eating disorders are thought to be high, but the exact rates were not known before this meta analysis published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The authors set out to systematically compile and analyze the mortality rates in individuals with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and eating disorder not otherwise [read the full story…]
