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The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness

With already wide disparities in physical health and life expectancy, COVID-19 presents people with mental illness with additional threats to their health: decreased access to health services, increased social isolation, and increased socio-economic disadvantage. Each of these factors has exacerbate...

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Autores principales: Roberts, Russell, Johnson, Caroline, Hopwood, Malcolm, Firth, Joseph, Jackson, Kate, Sara, Grant, Allan, John, Calder, Rosemary, Manger, Sam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9516962/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36142019
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811746
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author Roberts, Russell
Johnson, Caroline
Hopwood, Malcolm
Firth, Joseph
Jackson, Kate
Sara, Grant
Allan, John
Calder, Rosemary
Manger, Sam
author_facet Roberts, Russell
Johnson, Caroline
Hopwood, Malcolm
Firth, Joseph
Jackson, Kate
Sara, Grant
Allan, John
Calder, Rosemary
Manger, Sam
author_sort Roberts, Russell
collection PubMed
description With already wide disparities in physical health and life expectancy, COVID-19 presents people with mental illness with additional threats to their health: decreased access to health services, increased social isolation, and increased socio-economic disadvantage. Each of these factors has exacerbated the risk of poor health and early death for people with mental illness post-COVID-19. Unless effective primary care and preventative health responses are implemented, the physical illness epidemic for this group will increase post the COVID-19 pandemic. This perspective paper briefly reviews the literature on the impact of COVID-19 on service access, social isolation, and social disadvantage and their combined impact on physical health, particularly cancer, respiratory diseases, heart disease, smoking, and infectious diseases. The much-overlooked role of poor physical health on suicidality is also discussed. The potential impact of public health interventions is modelled based on Australian incidence data and current research on the percentage of early deaths of people living with mental illnesses that are preventable. Building on the lessons arising from services’ response to COVID-19, such as the importance of ensuring access to preventive, screening, and primary care services, priority recommendations for consideration by public health practitioners and policymakers are presented.
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spelling pubmed-95169622022-09-29 The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness Roberts, Russell Johnson, Caroline Hopwood, Malcolm Firth, Joseph Jackson, Kate Sara, Grant Allan, John Calder, Rosemary Manger, Sam Int J Environ Res Public Health Communication With already wide disparities in physical health and life expectancy, COVID-19 presents people with mental illness with additional threats to their health: decreased access to health services, increased social isolation, and increased socio-economic disadvantage. Each of these factors has exacerbated the risk of poor health and early death for people with mental illness post-COVID-19. Unless effective primary care and preventative health responses are implemented, the physical illness epidemic for this group will increase post the COVID-19 pandemic. This perspective paper briefly reviews the literature on the impact of COVID-19 on service access, social isolation, and social disadvantage and their combined impact on physical health, particularly cancer, respiratory diseases, heart disease, smoking, and infectious diseases. The much-overlooked role of poor physical health on suicidality is also discussed. The potential impact of public health interventions is modelled based on Australian incidence data and current research on the percentage of early deaths of people living with mental illnesses that are preventable. Building on the lessons arising from services’ response to COVID-19, such as the importance of ensuring access to preventive, screening, and primary care services, priority recommendations for consideration by public health practitioners and policymakers are presented. MDPI 2022-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9516962/ /pubmed/36142019 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811746 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Communication
Roberts, Russell
Johnson, Caroline
Hopwood, Malcolm
Firth, Joseph
Jackson, Kate
Sara, Grant
Allan, John
Calder, Rosemary
Manger, Sam
The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness
title The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness
title_full The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness
title_fullStr The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness
title_full_unstemmed The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness
title_short The Potential Impact of a Public Health Approach to Improving the Physical Health of People Living with Mental Illness
title_sort potential impact of a public health approach to improving the physical health of people living with mental illness
topic Communication
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9516962/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36142019
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811746
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