Schizophrenia linked with four times higher risk of death from sudden heart attack

Risk of death due to a sudden heart attack could be four times higher for patients of schizophrenia, a new study has found.

For those having other types of mental illness such as depression, death risk is still twice as high, regardless of age, suggesting that an 18-year-old could expect to live 10 years fewer, compared to one of same age without mental health issues, researchers have found.

The team from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, said that while having a psychiatric condition is known to heighten death risk due to a sudden cardiac arrest, it is not clear if the risk extends across one’s lifespan.

For the study, published in the journal Heart, the researchers looked at deaths in 18-90 year old Danish residents during 2010. Over 45,000 people had died that year, of which 6,002 were classified as sudden cardiac deaths — 3,683 in the general population and 2,319 among those with a mental illness.

The team found that overall, cases of sudden deaths due to a heart attack were up to 6.5 times more among those having a mental disorder, compared to the general population.

Death risk was twice as high in people with depression, 3-fold higher among those with bipolar disorder, and 4.5 times higher risk among those with schizophrenia, the researchers said.

Ill mental health was found to be related with a doubling in death risk from a sudden cardiac arrest, regardless of age, sex, and co-existing medical conditions.

Further, having a mental health condition was also significantly linked with death due to other causes — almost 3 times the risk compared to that in the general population — and with a shortened lifespan.

The researchers also estimated that a 70-year-old with a mental health condition could expect to live another 10 years, compared with 14 more years that one without such a condition could expect to live for.

A sudden death due to a cardiac arrest was also found to explain about 13 per cent of the discrepancy in reduced longevity among people with ill mental health, the team said.

While they acknowledged no cause-and-effect links, the researchers proposed that unhealthy lifestyle that people with mental health conditions are likely to follow, along with side-effects of medications, could make such individuals vulnerable to developing metabolic disorders, including high blood pressure and heart disease.