MedWire (1/19, Cowen) reports that according to a study published online Jan. 17 in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, “the overall mortality rate among elderly patients with schizophrenia is more than twice that in the general elderly population.”
Researchers arrived at this conclusion after examining “mortality rates between 1999 and 2008 among 9,461 patients with the mental health disorder who were aged 65 years or older in 1999,” then comparing those findings “with mortality rates in the age- and gender-matched general population over the same period, and expressed as standard mortality ratios.”