A new study has found that individuals who have been diagnosed with mental health conditions such as schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia have a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease when they are young, in comparison to adults who haven’t been diagnosed with these mental conditions.
Schizoaffective disorder is a continuous duration of illness in which an individual experiences major mood episodes, which could be depressive or manic. Individuals with this disorder meet the criteria for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that causes delusions, hallucinations or disorganized speech while bipolar disorder is a mental disorder that causes untempered shifts in an individual’s concentration, mood, levels of activity and energy. Individuals with schizophrenia may seem out of touch with reality, which may lead to considerable distress for them as well as their friends and family.
Rebecca C. Rossom, lead author of the study and a senior behavioral health research investigator, stated that prior studies had shown that individuals diagnosed with severe mental disorders died 10 to 20 years earlier than the general population, with heart disease as the main cause of death.
Rossom explained that the group’s research centered on risk factors for cardiovascular ailments, including body mass index (“BMI”), blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking status, noting that the researchers compared overall risk for heart disease for individuals with and without a mental illness diagnosis.
For their study, the researchers conducted an analysis assessing health data for an estimated 600,000 individuals who had visited a primary care clinic in Wisconsin and Minnesota between 2016 and 2018. All the individuals were aged between 18 and 75.
Of the total number, about 11,000 individuals had been diagnosed with a severe mental health condition, with researchers finding that the majority had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and the remaining with schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia.
The researchers found that the 30-year risk of cardiovascular disease was considerably higher among those who’d been diagnosed with any of the three mental health conditions. They also found that the heightened risk of heart disease was even more evident in individuals aged between 18 and 34 who had a severe mental illness.
In addition to this, the researchers discovered that BMI and smoking accounted for much of the risk factors that contributed to cardiovascular disease in those with severe mental health conditions, noting that these individuals were more likely to be smokers in comparison to peers who hadn’t been diagnosed with any mental illness.
The study’s findings were reported in the “Journal of the American Heart Association.”
Given the implications of such research findings, it is imperative that patients diagnosed with any of those serious mental disorders take advantage of existing treatments to manage their conditions. It is also important that biopharmaceutical companies such as Cybin Inc. (NYSE American: CYBN) (NEO: CYBN) press ahead with their efforts to come up with more effective formulations targeting mental health indications.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Cybin Inc. (NEO: CYBN) (NYSE American: CYBN) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CYBN
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