Effective Physical Health Care of People with Schizophrenia - Literature review Example

Download file to see previous pages Health and well-being are seen to be among the most prominent aspect that individuals are cautious about owing to the prevalence of severe and chronic diseases that threatens their existence (Kirmayer, 2001). It is evident that in the present-day context, there exist various diseases and health complications that can impact people mentally and physically in the short term and long term and one such disease is schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that alters a person’s perception, emotion, and behavior; it is usually characterized by psychotic symptoms such as hallucination, delusion, thought disorder, and paranoia (Sin, 2013; WHO, 2006). While schizophrenia remains a mental disorder, various studies have argued its complications on physical health and this continues to threaten the existence of people with this disorder.

In the study Brown and Mitchel (2012), they conducted a ten-year follow-up for 95 patients to ascertain the causes of death in people with schizophrenia. The authors reported that people suffering from schizophrenia have been shown to have a significantly low life expectancy with reports of their mortality being 2-3 times higher than that of the general population. At the end of the ten-year follow-up, it was established that 29 patients had died at the mean age of 61.9 years. Brown and Mitchel (2012) identified that the leading cause of mortality among these patients is natural causes with the largest percentage cause of death being cardiovascular disease. This is in tandem with the reports that physical illness is quite common among individuals suffering from severe schizophrenia. Sebastian and Beer (2007) attribute this to different factors such as the association between mental and physical illnesses and the complications resulting from mental illness.

Schizophrenia patients and other mentally ill patients often suffer many physical health-related problems. Various studies on the interaction between physical health and mental health indicate psychiatric patients often endure physical health complications. In the study of Heggelund et al (2011), they identified that low levels of oxygen uptake in people with schizophrenia could be linked to the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD).  ...Download file to see next pages Read More