PLoS One: cardiovascular symptoms of patients with severe mental disorders should not be underestimated

September 19, 2019 / BIOON / -- according to a recent study published in the journal PLoS One, the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with mental illness may be seriously underestimated Severe mental illness (including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression) is positively correlated with the incidence rate of cardiovascular disease Although some existing risk prediction algorithms estimate the prescription of antipsychotics as a risk factor, this is not the case in most cases The authors of this study investigated whether these existing algorithms might underestimate the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with mental illness The authors estimated data for 430241 New Zealand patients aged 30 to 74 who underwent a routine cardiovascular risk assessment between 2004 and 2016 They calculated the risk of recent contact with psychiatric patients and compared them with the incidence rate of cardiovascular disease observed (image source: www Pixabay Com) the risk prediction algorithm is relatively accurate in predicting the risk of cardiovascular disease in people who have not received mental health services recently However, for those who have already received mental health services, the prediction of the algorithm is always underestimated: as high as 30% of male patients and as high as 60% of female patients This work shows that the existing cardiovascular disease risk prediction algorithm may not fully consider the factor of mental illness, and indicates the need for further research on the causes of the risk of severe mental illness "The tools doctors use to predict the risk of heart disease don't work well for people with mental illness experience, and doctors need to be aware of that," the authors added For people with severe mental illness, cardiovascular disease risk may be inferential, Jackson R (2019) Prediction of cardiovascular disease risk among people with severe mental illness: A cohort study PLoS ONE 14(9): e0221521 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221521