Why do psychiatric patients have higher cancer mortality rates when cancer incidence is the same or lower?

Conclusions: Lifestyle, such as alcohol or tobacco use, would not explain our findings that people with mental illness are no more likely than the general population to develop cancer but more likely to die of it. Other factors may be the difficulty in differentiating medically explained and unexplained symptoms, greater case fatality or inequity in access to specialist procedures. The study highlights the need for improved cancer screening, detection and intervention in this population.
Source: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Research Source Type: research