Are anti psychotics responsible for the premature death of schizophrenics. It was in the news in my country that these anti psychotics are steadily killing us schizophrenics. Thus the life expectancy for schizophrenics is up to 15 yrs less than other healthy people.
Anyway, it said in the news that these meds are responsible for weakening our cardiovascular health, as well as the problems with weight gain and diabetes and high cholesterol.
Anyway, I thought these meds were just responsible for negative symptoms. I didn’t know they were actually responsible for slowly killing us. I thought schizophrenics mainly died young because they smoked. But no the physical health is screwed round too because of these meds.
Seroquel can up my chances of diabetes and that scares me.
But with out it, my head circus takes over completely. Last time that happened, I almost successfully committed suicide. So I sort of see it as damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
The most recent published data show that, although antipsychotics do cause cardiovascular and metabolic syndromes, they do not contribute to early mortality in the overall schizophrenic population.
Most deaths occur from suicide and accidents, rather than from heart attacks, strokes, or metabolic syndrome–although these have been reported by the FDA. It should be noted, however, the first generation APs carry a heavier risk of morbidity and mortality, compared to atypical APs.
Maybe we haven’t lived long enough for the end results to come in.
I’m being treated in some form for each of the disorders listed in the original post. Successfully, some of which I’m doing myself. However I wonder about things that might slip by unnoticed.
With all the environmental chemicals, etc. I wonder if Something is slowly killing us all, anyway.
Here is a recent research study on the topic. I’ve also read that part of the issue is that people with schizophrenia frequently don’t get as good a medical coverage/ treatment as people who don’t have schizophrenia. So they might not get as good a screening for high blood pressure, heart disease, etc.
In the study below, the key factors seem to be cigarette smoking and heat disease (heart disease is well known to also be triggered by smoking also). I’m sure that increased weight from antipsychotics might be a factor - but that can also be controlled somewhat by dietary changes and (as identified earlier) metformin.
Conclusions Some of the excess mortality of schizophrenia could be lessened by reducing patients’smoking and exposure to other environmental risk factors and by improving the management of medical disease, mood disturbance and psychosis.