The majority of mental illnesses have a life expectancy similar to that of normal people after standardized treatment. Individual illnesses can affect a person’s life expectancy, such as schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia has significant abnormalities of mental activities in various aspects such as emotion, thinking, cognition, and behavior, which can lead to significant impairment of social, work, and other functions. Shen Yu Chuen Psychiatry suggests that schizophrenia has a higher than normal probability of suffering from physical illnesses such as hypertension, heart disease or diabetes, and accidental injuries, affecting life expectancy by an average of 8 to 16 years.
Schizophrenia is often combined with cardiac arrhythmia, hyperlipidemia, diabetes and other physical diseases, the probability of suffering accidental injury is higher than normal people, the average life expectancy affects 8~16 years, recurrent episodes or worsening can appear personality changes, social function decline, combined with substance abuse lifetime prevalence rate of 30~50%.
Mental illness once diagnosed should be timely to the hospital for consultation, not self-medication, in order to avoid adverse reactions, most of the standardized treatment will not affect the life expectancy.