ABSTRACT
In recent years there has been a renewal of interest in defining the true extent of the influence of psychiatric illness on mortality. In the present study, which was carried out in Mannheim, West Germany, an attempt was made to assess the influence of psychiatric disorder on the life expectation of old people, while controlling for various important risk factors for mortality by means of a multivariate statistical technique. Finally, the clinical severity of psychiatric illness proved to be of high predictive power for mortality. The findings of this study show that, after correcting for other established risk factors, in an unselected sample of elderly persons living in the community, psychiatric illness is associated with a marked reduction in life expectancy. It seems highly improbable that the association between mental illness and mortality in old age can be explained to any large extent in terms of unnatural causes of death.
