Decrease in life expectancy due to psych drugs?

I know I'm evidently behind the times...but I just read some reference to "the taking of psychiatric drugs can lead to a 25 year decrease in life expectancy." Anybody know more details? (Of course, I need more reasons to be depressed--sarcasm intended!) What drugs? How long does one have to take them to lose all these years?

I am guessing that the study is using correlation, not cause and effect. A big part of it is probably that people who are susceptible to poor health care, poor self-care, self-destructive behaviors, economic disadvantage, etc. due to mental health issues; not to mention physical problems that might be related to the mental health issues in some way; and also take psychiatric meds due to mental health issues probably don't tend to live as long. Not to say that meds might not contribute somewhat, but probably not as much as the reference seems to imply.

I haven't read the study but it seems to me that "the taking of <any> drugs can lead to a decrease in life expectancy".

Requiring drugs presumes an illness of some type, be it psychiatric or medical; is it not likely that having an illness might decrease life expectancy?

I am curious which psychiatric drugs/disorders were associated with 25 year premature death.

Link?

does it really matter? for me if i don't take psych drugs i may not be around for another year or less.

The source material for the statement that persons with serious mental illness live 25 years less than the general population can be found at:

http://www.nasmhpd.org/
Click on publications and look under "Technical Papers"
Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness

I would have downloaded this pdf file, but it exceeds the limits to post.

I didn't by any means read all 87 pages of the study, but they seem to be saying that the mortality rate is due to a multitude of causes, most of them preventable such as obesity, smoking, illicit drug use, etc. Polypharmacy was way down the list as a contributing cause. Mostly they cited the risk of increased diabetes due to metabolic syndrome which is a risk with antipsychotic medications. Thus the reason we have to work to maintain our health, exercise, eat right, etc.

People diagnosed with depression, lose 25 years of life expectancy. I don't think it has to do with drugs specifically but the depression thing. But here's a good article on the medical problems associated with psychiatric drugs:

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/P...367/story.html

it also shortens the life expectancy of your bank account, at least in my case it did. getting "help" costs a lot of money if you don't have good health insurance and I don't.

Thanks for all the responses! I'm actually feeling better by what you all said....Also, thanks for the links.

Yes, I agree. This doesn't mean we should give up all the drugs. What would be the use of living additional years if they were miserable ones?!

Here's the one-sentence summary of the findings: "Their increased morbidity and mortality are largely due to treatable medical conditions that are caused by modifiable risk factors such as smoking, obesity, substance abuse, and inadequate access to medical care."

None of their findings implicate either the mental disease itself or the medications that are being used.

Here's where you can go immediately to the paper itself:

http://www.nasmhpd.org/general_files...%208.18.08.pdf

Take care!

Wow! I'm impressed with all your references. Thanks for the summary sentence. And, yes, I know what it means to have a "decreased wallet." I have to be grateful for good insurance. I know one time I went up to a new lady behind the drug counter, and she announced that my bill would be something like $2,0000--and that was for one month. That almost caused me to have a fatal heart attack right then and there. Fortunately, she didn't realize that I had insurance when she made that announcement.

References? What references? The summary sentence is right from the report itself.

Take care.

Thanks Ygrec23 for downloading the link to the paper!

I meant "references" to "refer" to all the stuff I've gotten--also the idea of a list of sources at the end of a research paper. I was using it in the way I learned in grad school, I guess--didn't mean to offend! I certainly did appreciate the actual quoted statement! I expect it did take a lot of effort to hunt it up, and I can see from the responses that everybody is appreciating finding out the actual articles. As I indicated, I just read it sort of like as a third-hand remark in something else.....Also, someone posted sometime saying that she didn't want to take psychotropic drugs because they "caused a decrease in life expectancy." In my reply, I asked her where she had heard/read that, and she never responded!

Hey PAYNE1 not taking my meds for bipolar will definitely shorten my life!

I have read similar articles and I had a co-worker that constantly asked me if I was concerned that the meds were screwing up my central nervous system. After the third time she asked me this I told her that it may be, but it's better than offing myself. She never asked me about it again LOL!

Right! "Offing ourselves" would definitely decrease our life expectancy!

Hi, Payne1! Thank you for your most recent post, which explained much. I hope that the following is helpful too.

People with SMI’s (Serious Mental Illnesses) in the United States live on average 25 years less than people without SMI’s. Why is this true? It’s true because (1) some meds help us eat more than we should, and (2) people with SMI’s smoke a lot, feeling that smoking is one of the few real pleasures in their lives and not being willing to trash the habit.

The psychotropic meds we take are not poisons like cyanide, strychnine or arsenic. Nor do they directly cause any kind of disease; heart disease, cancer or whatever. In fact, they aren’t poisons at all. However, some of them (not all of them) increase the appetite for food and by doing so contribute to the problems of overweight and obesity. Overweight and obesity contribute, in turn, to standard health problems like heart disease and diabetes. Yet all of us have some control over how much we eat, though there’s no question that limiting our intake of calories is difficult and even very difficult.

In addition, as stated above, is the fact that mentally ill people smoke much more than people not so affected. And, of course (as we all know), smoking contributes not only to heart disease and cancer, but to many other kinds of disease. Reliable research shows that today, only 15.7% of the general population continues to smoke. The percentage of people with SMI is wildly different: 75% of people with SMI smoke cigarettes!

Smoking and being overweight, between them, are the main reasons for the fact that people with SMI’s die substantially earlier than those who don’t suffer from SMI’s.

So what is the definition of this “SMI” (Serious Mental Illness)? Obviously, it can’t mean everyone with every kind of mental illness. If it covered all people with any kind of mental illness there would be no use in adding the word “serious” to the words “Mental Illness.” People with an SMI form a subset of people with any form of mental illness. To make a long story short, there is no generally agreed definition of SMI. The definitions used by different researchers, bureaucrats, politicians and clinicians are all tilted in favor of either a broader or narrower definition. Those who want to save money will use a narrower definition (the fewer the members of the group, the less money spent), and those who want to provide treatment for a larger number of sufferers will use a broader definition. And nobody is giving an inch. They’re all holding out for their own positions with no compromises.

I don’t think we’d be very off-base if we defined “SMI” to include schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, Bipolar of either type, DID, very intense depression and autism. However, debating the definition of SMI is not something we should spend a lot of time on in this post. What we’re trying to do in this brief post is to explain the reasons for the early deaths of people with SMI. And we can do that without fine-tuning the definition of SMI. You, readers, will know if you smoke and will know if you need to lose some weight, regardless of whether you’re suffering from an SMI or not.

The meds that may contribute to appetite and weight gain are by no means all of the meds that I and you take every day. In fact, even the “bad actors” of psychotropic meds don’t affect everyone the same way. When I was first prescribed amitriptyline in the early seventies, my P-doc at the time said nothing at all about any side-effects and there was no internet on which to do research about the drug. So I promptly gained thirty pounds. In the late nineties I was prescribed Zyprexa, but this time the medical profession was ready. I was told all about possible weight-gain. I read it in the newspapers. I read it on the internet. And I didn’t gain an ounce. Because forewarned is forearmed: I was alert, and when the eating urge came on I knew how to fight it. You can do the same.

Who are the “bad actors”? Tricyclics, SSRI’s, MAO’s, lithium, clozapine, olanzpine, risperidone, paxil, marplan, lexapro, seroquel, geodon, abilify and invega. The following meds are thought to be “weight neutral”: Prozac, Luvox, Zoloft, Celexa and Wellbutrin. For a long but readable (intended for non-professionals) NIMH article on the subject of psychotropic meds and which ones are used for which illnesses with some comments on side-effects, see:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/mental-health-medications/complete-index.shtml

To summarize: people with SMI’s die much younger than people who don’t suffer from SMI’s, but the reason that happens is because SMI sufferers eat too much and smoke cigarettes. If a person with an SMI keeps his or her weight down and doesn’t smoke, their probable life span will be the same as those of people who don’t have an SMI. Some psychotropic meds make food taste better and increase appetite. That’s the sole reason why those psychotropic meds “affect” people’s life spans. People with SMI’s also tend to smoke, and to smoke much more, than people without SMI’s. But the smoking is in no way influenced by the psychotropic meds. Accordingly, we’re not being poisoned by some evil Big Pharma conspiracy. It’s just that some (not all) meds are in some way connected with eating more. And we can reverse that added hunger if we try.

None of us should even consider not taking prescribed meds without a long and serious talk with our P-doc and his/her agreement. It very well may be that the "dangers" of a particular med are far outweighed by the benefits of taking the drug, depending on the severity of our illness and how well the med has helped us cope with it. Overweight and smoking are things we should be able to deal with separately. As I'm sure everyone is well aware, there are all kinds of programs available (frequently free) to help us eat less or not smoke at all. We do not need to stop taking meds in order to deal with the problems of smoking or overeating.

Note: PC members have enough on their hands dealing with Real Life and their very real problems and situations. There is no reason whatsoever to add to their misery by making facts and circumstances much, much more frightening and worrying than they really are. It’s the responsibility of every one of us in all posts to seriously investigate any inflammatory or frightening claim or report before we post about it on PC. Nothing, absolutely NOTHING, presented here was or is news. People knew fifteen years ago that those suffering from SMI’s (and that’s NOT all of us) died earlier than others. And they knew fifteen years ago that med side-effects sometimes included increased hunger and weight gain. Nor was it a secret that SMI sufferers smoked a lot. For reasons of their own, probably related to lighting a fire under the legislators from whom they receive their budget money, the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors found it a “good thing” to commission and distribute a report that almost treats these conclusions and findings as something new. The fact is, nothing has changed. These facts or conclusions may be new to you, but they weren’t and aren’t new to the “experts.”

When we feel threatened or frightened a chemical called “cortisol” is produced by and circulated through the body. Unlike the case with psychotropic meds, cortisol does have serious negative effects if we have too much of it for too long. We should never cause the cortisol level of our fellow members to rise unless absolutely, inescapably necessary. Take care!

Just as a follow-up to my post #17, the following are related publications that could provide those interested with more information:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14728103

http://focus.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/3/4/511

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/mental-health-medications/complete-index.shtml

http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10673220600889256

http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/56/3/324

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.2005.00637.x/abstract

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.2008.01334.x/abstract

http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/178_09_050503/lam10579_fm.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1463-1326.2009.01038.x/abstract

http://www.ajpm-online.net/article/S0749-3797(09)00024-5/abstract

http://publichealth.wustl.edu/people/Documents/Newcomer4.pdf

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/36/1/173.abstract

http://home.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/csi/cessation-mental-ill-or-addiction.pdf

http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/publications/visions/tobacco/bck/5

Take care!

This post might end up showing up twice basically--I wrote something, then tried to go to find further types of smiley faces--and even though I pressed the "submit" thingie, I don't see anything showing up. (I'm also behind the times when it comes to understanding how to work computers...) But, yes, I did acknowledge to being "behind the times" when it came to this idea that "psychotropic drugs lead to the 25-year-old decrease in life expectancy." That's why I was asking the person who wrote into PC about it.....

I KNOW it certainly sent my cortisol levels higher--if that's possible! In all fairness to me (and I suspect to some other people), I am relatively new to this mental-illness thing.....Actually, ten years, which might sound like a lot--but a good portion of that time has been spent just trying to survive. For all I know, this issue has been brought up many times on PC. If so, then thanks for your patience. At least those of us who didn't know the true facts are now well-informed, thanks particularly to my last poster--but also to all of you. And we can make sure to spread the truth. I am certainly relieved! (I WILL NOT however try to access the other smiley face that truly expresses how happy I am--the generic one will have to do!)

Dear Payne1!

You did right!!! You did good!!! In my experience, your's was the first posting I've seen on PC that raised the VERY important, life-critical, subject of the really negative behaviors that people with mental illnesses, including me, ignore as much as they can! Nobody else dared to bring up that 25 year figure, and I'm sure that got everyone's attention, which is as it should be! I need to lose twenty pounds AND STOP SMOKING myself!! I have a tendency (and I suppose I share it) to focus on getting through today, or at most this week, and let next year take care of itself. And yes, I do associate that with having mental problems. I may not want to, but I suppose I HAVE to, think about the rest of my life. I had a brother who died of lung cancer. Do I want to go that way? Our father died early of heart problems. Do I want to go that way? I personally had better face these issues now, because later will be too late. So thanks, Payne1, I do appreciate your raising the issue! Take care!

Of course, in Post #17 I left out mention or discussion of another serious factor that in any realistic discussion would have to be listed. But PC rules don't permit me to name it or talk about it. And that's as it should be. People here are, on average, more fragile than others. I can bring it up here without naming it, since most people on PC are quite bright enough to figure out what I'm talking about. This third factor (on top of smoking and eating too much) completes the response to the question about why people with SMI die younger than others. The third factor is not negligible. For any scientific study, it would have to be taken into account. For purposes of discussion here on PC, it's not so necessary. Everyone would take it as a given. For any of you out there who are thinking seriously about the third factor, it's just not a good idea. There are real solutions available without going so far. You just have to hang in there until you find one. They're there. I know this from personal experience. Long personal experience. Just find something to kill the pain or part of the pain until you get a solution. You will. It will happen. Take care!

That is so true, I think it isn't so much the drugs as it is the lifestyle!

This type of report also needs to consider what the life expectancy would be for the person in need of psych meds, if they didn't take psych meds. Also, what is their quality of life with and without the meds. Quality of life is as important as life expectancy if not more so.