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Health today

Mental health

Deaths by suicide, the life expectancy gap in severe mental illness, and the physical disease that follows it: what mental illness costs in lives.

Where the evidence stands

People with severe mental illness die fifteen to twenty years earlier than the rest of the population. Most of that gap is not suicide. It is heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness, arriving earlier and treated less. Suicide rates across the countries the site follows have been broadly flat for a decade. That flatness hides sharp differences by age and sex.

Depression is associated with later cardiovascular disease, and with worse survival after it. It is still unclear whether treating the one moves the other. Diagnosis and prescribing are measured well. Whether anyone got better is measured poorly.

Trackers

At a glance

Updated
Evidence
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Related drivers

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