In the Woodland, we often blog about the importance of addressing the physical and mental health needs of our patients (a topic close to my own Elf heart). Premature mortality and unaddressed physical ill-health is well documented in patients with serious mental illness. However, collecting sexual health histories from our patients appears to be rather lacking. Is this like the 1970s farce of No sex please, we’re British? and what do we know about the risks of not addressing this area?
Well, we don’t actually know that much about the prevalence of blood-borne viral infections such as HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C in patients with serious mental illness globally. No systematic reviews have been done and the reviews that have been published rarely report the rate of these infections. I am pleased to say that our very own Elf Liz Hughes and colleagues have completed a systematic review and meta-analysis of prevalence studies in this very area and it was published in the Lancet Psychiatry in November 2015 (Hughes et al, 2015).
