Another important addition to the list of ‘Mental Health Must Reads’ explains the fatal consequences of not treating mental health issues properly and the risks that the mentally ill face that increase our chances of meeting an early death.

Candida Abrahamson

It has been ‘known’ in the way that you know things deep down, when you don’t really consciously want to know them, that seriously mentally ill people, on average, die younger than those without mental illness.

But it was an ugly shock when the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) Medical Directors Council published the “Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness” study in October, 2006.

Wrote the council,

In fact, persons with serious mental illness (SMI) are now dying 25 years earlier than the general population. [italics mine]

First let’s address the terminology. The Agency for Health Care Research and Policy estimate that 1 in 4 U.S. adults suffer from a mental disorder in any given year, with 1 in 6 suffering from a serious mental illness.

A diagnosis for a serious mental illness, or SMI, requires meeting of the DSM criteria for the diagnosis…

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