Mental Health Disorders Reduce Life Expectancy by Up to 20 Years

A new review finds that adults with serious mental‑health conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder or PTSD can lose 10 to 20 years of life, mainly because of higher rates of heart disease.

• Study led by Viola Vaccarino (Emory) shows a 72% higher heart‑disease risk for depression and about a 95% increase for schizophrenia; bipolar (+57%), PTSD (+61%) and anxiety (+41%).
• Behavioral factors (smoking, poor diet, inactivity) and stress‑driven physiology (inflammation, high blood pressure, insulin resistance) link mental illness to cardiovascular damage.
• The relationship is bidirectional: about 18% of people with established cardiovascular disease are also depressed, rising to ~28% after a heart attack or stroke.
• Systemic gaps leave 54% of people with mental disorders untreated and many cardiology clinics without mental‑health screening, while psychiatric settings often miss blood‑pressure or cholesterol checks.
• Integrated care – combining exercise, mind‑body practices and coordinated mental‑health/cardiology teams – consistently improves both psychiatric outcomes and heart‑risk indicators.

Why it matters: Treating mental illness as a modifiable cardiac risk factor could close a decade‑plus life‑expectancy gap.

Read more: https://getnews.me/mental-health-disorders-reduce-life-expectancy-by-up-to-20-years/