UK study says COVID-19 linked to higher mortality in those with severe mental illness

According to a research by King's College London, COVID-19 markedly raised the chance of death in those with severe mental diseases like schizophrenia and psychosis by 50%.

Between February 2020 and April 2021, the researchers examined data from almost 660,000 UK patients, 7,146 of whom had serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, or other affective disorders with psychosis.

These severe mental illnesses were defined as having at least one diagnostic record entry during the study period. The study also explored the impact of ethnicity on COVID-19-related death risk, revealing that Black Caribbean/Black African individuals had a 22 percent higher risk of death compared to White individuals, irrespective of whether they had severe mental illness.


Despite the absence of ethnicity data for about 30 percent of the patients, the findings underscored existing health inequalities.

Lead author Jayati Das-Munshi emphasized that the pandemic had exposed these disparities and called for new policies and improved healthcare services to address them. Alex Dregan, the study's senior author, highlighted the need to understand why these disparities exist and how healthcare services can better serve these vulnerable populations.