Mortality in El-Khanka Psychiatric Hospital: a 5-year Retrospective Study

Abstract

Premature mortality is a well-established adverse outcome of severe mental illness (SMI), most notably for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depressive disorder. Investigating mortality patterns is important for monitoring the profile of changing risk factors over time, for evaluating the impact of socio-cultural and geographic settings on mortality, for reviewing the contribution of SMI to the global burden of disease, for advocating for the inclusion of SMI in the global health agenda and to establish the mortality profile in population samples, which has not been demonstrated adequately to date. Recent studies have demonstrated that public mental health patients die as much as 25 years earlier than individuals in the general population, largely as the result of medical causes rather than suicide or accidental death. The excess mortality due to diseases and medical conditions, especially cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, can be explained by excess morbidity due to unhealthy life style, connected to lack of health literacy and failure of health promotion actions to target this vulnerable population which may have a reduced ability to pick up information on need for behavioral changes. Also this could be explained by