The evidence is clear that people with severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, die earlier than the general US population. Their lives are shortened by an estimated 10 to 30 years, and that mortality risk appears to be increasing. The leading causes of death are cardiovascular disease and cancer, which suggests that a better understanding of ways to provide preventive services to the population with severe mental illness could help to reduce the number of these premature deaths.
The article that accompanies this editorial by Iglay et al adds to the body of literature on breast cancer and early mortality in women with severe mental illness. The authors focus on mortality rates for women with preexisting severe mental illness who are 68 years of age or older (hereafter referred to as older women) and diagnosed with breast cancer. This age-group is important to study because older women have the highest incidence of breast cancer.
The study not only evaluates a large nationwide data set of publicly insured women but also is the first, to our knowledge, to assess differences between women with and without severe mental illness with regard to specific characteristics of their breast cancer, including stage, tumor markers, tumor size, and lymph node involvement, by using the comprehensive SEER registry linked to Medicare enrollment records. This approach has allowed the authors to make comparisons of disease progression at the time of diagnosis between these patient populations.
Source: Journal of Clinical Oncology
