Early detection and prevention applies to medical comorbidity as well as psychiatric symptoms
Having a psychotic illness has been and remains a barrier to all forms of effective medical care. All serious mental illness is associated with undue medical morbidity and mortality.1,2 Such morbidity stems from a complex web of interactions between the illness itself, various aspects of the patient’s environment, the nature of the antipsychotic medication and, most worryingly, barriers to the acceptance within the wider medical profession of adequate screening and treatment for comorbidity.3 As 70% of patients with persistent psychoses receive some or all of their treatment from non-psychiatric physicians,4 this is an important issue for the broader profession.
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I have been a speaker/advisory board member for Hospira, one of the manufacturers of clozapine, in the past 2 years.