Mental Illness Reduces Lifespan As Much as Smoking 192
That smoking is bad for your health is a commonplace; cancer, lung disease, and other possible consequences can all shorten smokers' lifespans. A new meta study from researchers at Oxford concludes that mental illness is just as big a factor in shortening lives, and not only because depression is a contributing factor to suicide.
From the story at NPR: "We know that smoking boosts the risk of cancer and heart disease, says Dr. Seena Fazel, a psychiatrist at Oxford University who led the study. But aside from the obvious fact that people with mental illnesses are more likely to commit suicide, it's not clear how mental disorders could be causing early deaths. The researchers looked at data on 1.7 million patients, drawing from 20 recent scientific reviews and studies from mostly wealthy countries. Comparing the effects of mental illness and smoking helps put the stats in context, Fazel tells Shots. 'It was useful to benchmark against something that has a very high mortality rate.'" [Press release from Oxford.]
in addition to poor choices associated with ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition to the poor choices associated with irrationality ... remember that these are diseases of the brain. Complex syndromes that have effects beyond behavior and thinking. For example, depression is associated with pain.
Some interesting reading: Peter Kramer's Against Depression [google.com].
hmm could be... (Score:3, Interesting)
...mental health patients tend to be serious smokers too, self-medicating. Anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, major depression, to name a few. (Source: was married to a psych nurse)
Re:so true :| (Score:5, Interesting)
The rhetoric of "choice" and "responsibility" is quasi-religious anyway, with no basis in science.
The human mind is very far from rational, and what little neurological evidence we have suggests we may make decisions before we have even become consciously aware of them - it's just really good at tricking itself into thinking it is a magically rational computer.
Rather than an artificial, binary divide between the capable and the incapable, it would be much better if we thought on a sliding scale in terms of some people being programmed to manage certain affairs better than others, and recognised that there is no fault beyond birth.
why the focus on being your brother's keeper? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do people insist on studying, helping, fixing the mentally ill or the drug abusers? What about those who are "healthy" but run into unfortunate events (car crash, cancer, getting laid off)? If we're going to treat society as a single organism, wouldn't we want to give to the most capable rather than the least? Where is this constant need to fix people coming from?
Re:An opinion from a layman (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the big problems is that anti-psychotic drugs have severe, and sometimes fatal, side effects. (Many of them cause severe weight gain, often enough to lead to diabetes.)
It's actually difficult or impossible to find out whether a drug causes, say, fatal heart attacks, if they didn't show up with 1% frequency in 500 patients in 6 months in the original FDA approval trials.
World Psychiatry is an open access journal, but that issue isn't on its web site yet. http://www.wpanet.org/detail.p... [wpanet.org] So I can't read the article and find out whether they deal with this.
I had a friend who was schizophrenic. He had finished a couple of years at Columbia before the schizophrenia hit. Fortunately his parents were relatively wealthy, and they could put him up in an apartment with a relatively normal lifestyle. He had a girlfriend. They smoked a lot of marijuana.
One day he died suddenly, for no apparent reason. I think the final diagnosis was a heart attack. His psychiatrist insisted that it wasn't the drugs that did it, but I later found out that his drugs were associated with some fatalities.
Re:An opinion from a layman (Score:5, Interesting)
Listen to me please: your writing indicates a typical depressed thought pattern, trust me, I've been there - I've been worse than that. I've talked with people with depression and noticed the same things/patterns.
Guess what? Anti-depressants aren't intended to treat the _cause_ of depression. They aren't meant to be a "lucky pill" (a common meme) - they don't make one happy and aren't intended to. What they do is enabling the brain to work more as it is intended to and enable one to do other things to improve ones situation. However they need to be taken long term in order to do anything so taking them for a month and then quitting because "they don't do anything" that some people do isn't so smart.
If one is very depressed and want a quicker acting help I'd recommend ECT - Electroconvulsive Therapy. I've had it in several rounds and talked with people that also had it periodically, some for many years (chronic depression). It is extremely quick acting compared to pills, some people claim to feel better already after waking up from the (for civilized nations) mandatory sedation.
Is it risk free? No, _no_ treatment is risk free. People have died from complications when treating ingrown nails. ECT isn't good if one have very high blood pressure for instance as the pressures increase sharply, there are a number of other contraindications too. But ECT is the treatment with the most FUD around. It doesn't change one's personality, one doesn't suffer total memory loss, one doesn't get severe brain damages.
Memory loss is a common side-effect though but it is mostly short term and is compensated by the practitioner adjusting placement of electrodes and the parameters for the next treatment. Another is muscle ache however that is compensated for using a mild muscle relaxant in conjunction with the sedation.
About anti-depressants destroying the brain I'll not comment on directly however do you realize that depression _does_ destroy the brain? That is one reason for the faulty thought patterns and is easily verifiable by MRI on deeply depressed people. Anti-depressants and ECT have been shown to regrow lost brain matter.
These are verified findings from 3rd party BTW so not some company PR.
For your own sake I hope you do seek treatment, it can improve your quality of life drastically. I'm not talking about everything getting perfect over night, it will most likely take long time and well, is there anybody with a perfect life? ;) But it can be much better.
PS if you have problem discussing your problems (AFAIK pretty common for depressed people) I recommend writing them down on a paper when seeking treatment and giving it to the psychologist. In this way he/she can then easier ask relevant questions.
Drops of Jupiter (Score:3, Interesting)
but it is the lesser of two evils when compared to a healthy person.
That may be true on a statistical level however I personally know 4 people (plus their immediate family members) who lives were turned upside down by a combination of Zoloft (anti-stress) mixed with regular, but not excessive, alcohol consumption (anti-inhibitor). One of them (a 60yr old male with no police record) ended up in jail for attacking some cops, another (40yo male) was arrested and thrown into the local lock-up for threatening neighbours and the police who turned up to investigate.
The problem (from this layman's POV) is that unintentional abuse is easy and GP's hand out behaviour modifying pills like jelly beans. Humans needs some stress to function in a human society, take away the bodily symptoms of stress (adrenalin rush, etc) and you have basically removed the person "social filter". Lying, cheating, etc, no longer makes their heart beat a little faster so their brain is left wondering what "everybody else's" problem is, and why are they are suddenly being "picked on" by everybody. Whatever selfish bullshit pops into their head (ie: old fashioned "temptation") is simply acted upon without guilt. In other words a human's "moral compass" does not (and cannot) operate normally without stress. OTOH, I have known (or known of) many more than 4 people where such drugs have worked as advertised but mostly because their loved ones were on watch for behaviour changes and they read the warnings about mixing them with alcohol.
Stress is normal, panic attacks are not. There's a huge difference between the two that is quite often ignored by GP's in a ten minute consultation. Chronic panic attacks can almost always be traced back to a traumatic experience or more commonly an abusive and erratic parent.
Disclaimer: My ex-wife was treated with zoloft in the late 90's for life long panic attacks brought about by her soiciopathic (and incestuoes) father, she was the proverbial "swan" - plenty of social graces but peddling like crazy under the water. She was on the pills for about 3yrs, the change in personality did not happen overnight, it was subtle and gradual, or at least it was too subtle for me to connect it with the pills. However I can tell people from experience that when it gets to the point where your partner of 20yrs starts lying to your face like a chocolate drenched two year old, blaming the pills that were prescribed a year ago is not the first reaction. Our first grandchild was born about 5yrs ago, the ex threw away the pills and cut down on the wine, she has since apologised profusely to our kids and myself for her behaviour and gone back to being a swan. Thing is, once a family has been broken it tends to stay broken, given a 10-15yr of "water under the bridge" we all have the capacity to forgive the most egregious transgressions in a loved one, but very few of us have the amnesic ability to simply forget a "life changing" experience such as a "bitter" family break up , to paraphrase "Drops of Jupiter" - the return of a life long friend from the "soul vacation" of mental desperation is as good as it ever gets.
The following advice for treating stress/depression comes from personal hindsight, seek professional help if you need medical foresight.
1. Visit a GP to get a referral to a qualified psychologist.
2. DO NOT fill a prescription from the GP without first consulting the qualified psychologist you acquired in step 1.
3. DO NOT mix mind altering recreational drugs such as alcohol or weed with mind altering prescription drugs.
4. RTFM.
5. If everyone seems to be treating you like an arsehole, then it's a safe bet you're behaving like one.
Re:Drops of Jupiter (Score:4, Interesting)
If antidepressants are really the answer, why does America, with one of the highest rates of antidepressant use, also have one of the highest rates of depression in the world? If they were really effective, people should be less depressed, and in fact there's more depression and mental illness than ever. There's increasingly concern that antidepressants are actually making things worse. In the short term, antidepressants can be effective in managing the treatment of depression, for some people. The problem is that they can cause long-term changes in how the brain functions, such that the person becomes dependent upon the drug. This means that on quitting antidepressants, the depression is more likely to return than it would have been if it had simply been left to resolve itself. There have been a number of studies published that suggest that the long-term outcome of mental illness is worse when antidepressants are used. As far as I know, there isn't a single study that has shown that outcomes for depression are improved long-term- over the course of 5-10 years instead of 5-10 weeks- by the use of antidepressants.
Maybe antidepressants do have a role in treating mental illness, but given the risks- increased risk of suicide, the highly addictive nature of some of the drugs (especially ones with short half-lives) and the risk that they can make people worse than when they started, these should be a method of last resort for severe clinical depression, NOT a first-line treatment for everyone who seems moderately sad or anxious. There are a *lot* of things that have been shown to be potentially beneficial- cognitive behavioral therapy, exercise, light therapy, sleep therapy, and supplements like Omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin B, D, zinc and magnesium, cutting down on carbohydrates- which come without the risks posed by antidepressants.