Schizophrenia and Cancer

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This is another blog like last weeks. They are continuing to study the health of people with mental illness. This week they are talking that people with schizophrenia are more susceptible to cancer. “People with serious mental illness –schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and disabling depression – are 2.6 times more likely to develop cancer than the general population, new John Hopkins research suggests.” Again more than the general population, sometimes it seems like we cannot catch a break. Just being mentally ill is enough.
The article goes on to point out: “The increased risk is definitely there, but we’re not sure why, says study leader Gail L. Daumit, M.D., M. H. S., an associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Are these people getting screened? Are they being treated? Something’s going on.” That is not all the bad news. “In a separate study, published last month in the journal Injury Prevention, Daumit found that people with serious mental illness were nearly twice as likely to end up in a hospital’s emergency room or inpatient department suffering from an injury than the general population and about 4.5 times more likely to die from their injuries.” Why are they suffering injuries and then die from them? That is the question.
The article says: “In the first study, Daumit’s team looked at data from 3,317 Maryland Medicaid beneficiaries with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, determining whether they developed cancer between 1994 and 2004 and what type of cancer they had. They found that patients with schizophrenia, when compared to the general population, were more than 4.5 times more likely to develop lung cancer, 3.5 times more likely to develop colorectal cancer and nearly three times more likely to develop breast cancer. People with bipolar disorder experienced similarly high risk for lung, colorectal and breast cancer. There were no racial differences in who developed cancer in this group, whose average age was between 42 and 43 years.” This tells who gets cancer and not the why. That is very young to get any disease let alone cancer.
We get a little of an answer in this part of the article: “Daumit says one reason for the elevated risk of lung cancer could be smoking, which is more prevalent in people with serious mental illnesses. She also speculates that the breast cancer risk could be related to the fact that women with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are less likely to have children, and childbearing is believed to reduce breast cancer risk. Also, some psychotropic medications can increase levels of the hormone prolactin, a factor that has been linked to breast cancer. The colorectal cancer risk, she says, could be related to lifestyle issues, such as smoking, lack of physical activity and diet lacking fruits and vegetables.” All the things a person need nowadays to stay healthy. I used to smoke but I quit so I could be with my granddaughter. I remember coughing so bad one day this guy told me if I did not quit that I would die. That still did not make me quit. I am glad now though that I did quit. The article goes on to say there needs to be more screening.
Now we will talk about the second study: “…Daumit and her colleagues looked at similar Maryland Medicaid data from 1994 through 2001 in search of other patterns. They found that over a seven year period, 43 percent of the 6,234 people with serious mental illness in the group studied were seen at a hospital emergency department or admitted with an injury. Among the members of the study group with an injury, 42 percent were injured once, 23 percent twice, 25 percent three to five times and 10 percent six or more times.” That is a lot of people with mental illness going to the emergency room. Are they falling a lot?
The article says: “Superficial injuries, open wounds and sprains were the types of injuries most frequently experienced by those in the study… Daumit says the results suggest that people with serious mental illness appear to be at heightened risk for both intentional and unintentional injury, and the types of injuries are mostly consistent with falls and minor violence.” I can see how people are not watching where they are walking or running. Minor violence should not be happening to anybody. Accident do happen though and hopefully not too many.
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