Severe mental illness and covid

[friendlyflicka]

Why is this so under-reported? Or am I reading the wrong papers and listening to the wrong radio?

There have been 2 separate reports - latest from New York - that charted that those with schizophrenia have a huge chance of dying from covid. Sorry I will try to find the stats afterwards and post.

And there was an earlier in the UK with the same kind of statistics for serious and enduring mental illness...ie Bipolar and Schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder. It was in the same report as the similar news about the fate of the learning disabled.

Apart from the risks/side effects associated with the prescribed drugs for these conditions - obesity diabetes, heart irregularities etc - people with severe and enduring mental illness are likely to die 20 years earlier than those without the condition.

So why is this not headline news? Once again, the severely mentally ill, are being disregarded - as usual because they rarely have the campaigning capacity to demand parity.

I have bipolar. I think schizophrenia is the more risky illness for covid death. Am I finding discrimination where there is none? I just find increasingly that the media, celebrities and happy to talk about certain mental illnesses, the ones that can easily be labelled as 'mental health' and other mental illnesses (and that is what I consider I have) are still unacceptable and stigmatising.

sorry, Daily Mail

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9192869/Schizophrenics-THREE-TIMES-likely-die-Covid-19.html

www.cebm.net/covid-19/severe-mental-illness-and-risks-from-covid-19/

Yeah, "mental health awareness" pisses me off sometimes. Seems to mostly exist to give healthy people an excuse to break the rules cause it cheers them up when they visit their mum or have a coffee with their mate.

I had read about it. I think it may be underreported because it affects a small number of people, and probably people do feel more uncomfortable about certain mental health illnesses.

But if it also includes Major Depressive Disorder ie Serious psychotic recurrent depression it is a huge chunk of the population who are almost always disregarded.

And who should be be high up on the vaccine list as vulnerable. A lot of us do have other conditions as well that are genuinely outside our control - I try my best with weight and am normal BMI but a vast amount of people on Anti-psychotics and mood stabilisers are not - but the heart risks and strain on my serious organs are side effects of my medication.

People with severe mental illness aren't completely ignored; we're vaccine group 6. Presumably they'll go by the GP SMI register for that, which if you're schizophrenic or bipolar, you'll be on. I think at their discretion people with other diagnoses can go on the register too.

Is it the metabolic link to some of the meds I wonder. Covid is worse in diabetics.

@NoIDontLikeTrains thanks for that information. Makes me feel better. I will be in the group, but it is more that the surveys have peen put to practical application

I don't disagree with your point, though; we're often disregarded, in favour of more palatable mental health related issues.

The only person that I know who died of covid also struggled with their mental health and had attempted suicide. They were only 50.

thanks for that information - @NoIDontLikeTrains

I just looked it up

www.rethink.org/advice-and-information/covid-19-support/covid-19-vaccine-and-people-living-with-severe-mental-illness/

It wasn't really that I thought I should push to the front of the queue. Just that I was sick of the severely mentally ill being once again disregarded because they don't have loud enough voices.

I agree Op everybody is very mental health aware these days or they think they are ,all the be kind and " my mental health is suffering" etc but severe and enduring mental illness is ignored .

My experience of people with "severe and long lasting" mental illness is limited to just 1 individual and he's exactly the sort of person that would be vulnerable to early death (from COVID, pneumonia, heart disease, suicide etc etc)

But the reasons for this are complex and it's possibly not fixable, certainly not an easy fix. So not sure it being "Headline News" would make any difference- certainly not to him. If you wanted to fix it youd have to start by sorting out mental health services and youd have to live under a rock to have missed the years of debate around that.

Tbh if this person dies 20 years early that wont be nearly as much a tragedy as the misery and chaos he's suffered during the previous 50 years.

The same people who ignored me when I had psychotic depression and stopped visiting after for years, were sharing 'memes' about 'stay at home mums depression' with "I know who will are this and who won't

Tbh if this person dies 20 years early that wont be nearly as much a tragedy as the misery and chaos he's suffered during the previous 50 years

That's a little insensitive to share on a post where people are suffering from it as well

Mental health services have been a mess for a very long time ,the trust I worked for used to waste so much money ,they need a complete overhaul ,.

I thought the ones living in supported housing or institutions are the ones who will get the jab in group 6.

Having had a lifetime's worth of mental health services and facilities and treatment, I am more than aware of the issues.

But this would have been a normal piece of information that should have got as much publicity as other covid discoveries. And it didn't. This would be one small step on a much needed educational process.

@Porcupineintherough 'the years of debate' about mental health services have more recently focused on a certain group of disorders that are treatable by GPs and the less qualified in very short timescales. They have largely ignored the severe and enduring because they are much less anecdotally palatable and far less socially acceptable. And crucially, expensive to help and less vocal.

lovemirage do you have a link or anything that gives more detail on who's counted under "severe mental illness"? Usually when the government uses that term without clarification, they mean the SMI register, but as OP points out, nobody's thought it worth giving any more detail on this group's eligibility.

(For me personally it doesn't matter as I qualify for group 6 on three other criteria as well, but I'm still interested.)

“Individuals with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or any mental illness that causes severe functional impairment.”

It is on that Rethink link I shared. If you scroll down...

'And despite the misery and suffering I have endured for more than fifty years' there have been many wonderful times and I love my life and don't want to be written off by others twenty years too early on account of my illness status.