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. 2022 Sep 17;19(18):11746.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph191811746.

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

Russell Roberts  1 , Caroline Johnson  2 , Malcolm Hopwood  2 , Joseph Firth  3 , Kate Jackson  4 , Grant Sara  4   5 , John Allan  6 , Rosemary Calder  7 , Sam Manger  8
Affiliations

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

Russell Roberts et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; CVD; cancer; comorbidity; mental health; physical health; respiratory disease; smoking; vaccination.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Proportion of early deaths of persons (age: 15–74 years) accessing mental health-related services by cause of death (adapted from ABS, 2017) [2].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Relative risk of early death by population group (adapted from ABS, 2017 [2]). * Persons aged 15 to 64 years, compared to total Australian population 15 to 64 years.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Percentage of suicide deaths associated with risk factors (adapted from ABS, 2018, 2019 [40,41]).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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