The Relationship between Premature Death and Affective Disorders
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TL;DR
The relationship between mental illness and physical disease in elderly patients has been the subject of a number of studies, and Kay and Bergmann (1966) demonstrated a relationship between physical illness and diminished life expectancy on the one hand and functional psychiatric disorders on the other.
Abstract
The relationship between mental illness and physical disease in elderly patients has been the subject of a number of studies, notably those by Kay and Roth (1955) and Roth and Kay (1956). Stenstedt (1952, 1959) reported a high mortality rate among patients with manic-depressive psychosis and involutional melancholia, which he attributed to ‘the high frequency of suicide and to the fact that several patients had died in a mental hospital’. In a survey of elderly people living in the community, Kay and Bergmann (1966) demonstrated a relationship between physical illness and diminished life expectancy on the one hand and functional psychiatric disorders on the other. Shepherd et al. (1964), in a general practice survey in London, found a 'strongly marked association between psychiatric disorder and chronic organic illness'.