People with serious mental illness (SMI) die up to 32 years earlier than the general population, said Karen Fortuna, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth College.
“People are dying younger than ever, and that’s not because of COVID,” he said.
Fortuna, along with Robert Walker and Andrew Bohm, presented a symposium on Thursday titled Addressing Health Inequalities in Life Expectancy through Community-Involved Research at Boston College. The BC School of Social Work and Health and Mental Health Field of Practice sponsored the event.
The three created Collaborative design for recovery and health—a platform where patients and scientists from around the world can share research to combat early mortality rates.
The platform’s research has appeared in more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, in smartphone apps that create a biosensor to diagnose preclinical schizophrenia, in seminars and trainings, and has received several grants, Fortuna said.
According to Fortuna, she and her colleagues are also researching trauma in people with severe mental illness. Fortuna said the empirical literature fails to explain the role of trauma (acute, chronic, or complex) in early mortality rates.
“Ninety percent of people diagnosed with SMI have experienced trauma,” Fortuna said. “It leads to all kinds of health impacts, and all the health interventions and programs that are out there do not address trauma.”
It’s imperative that medical and mental health facilities have new programs and services to provide a type of trauma screening, Fortuna said, to have a useful impact on this population.
Bohm also spoke about the impact that people with SMI can have on their families and how there is not enough support for those family members. Addressing and investigating questions about this type of support is the first step in making changes within this system, Bohm said.
Bohm then explained precision medicine: medicine that is tailored to individual patients. He said the push for precision medicine is an attempt to individualize care by taking into account different sociodemographic, environmental and lifestyle factors.
“Adapting someone’s care isn’t necessarily as simple as saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got this diagnosis, here’s your pill,'” he said. “It absolutely provides protection, but it doesn’t necessarily treat that patient, it treats that condition.”
More research into precision medication could have a big impact on individual patients, Bohm said, by tailoring it to their specific needs. He said his team is discovering the best way to deliver this research to patients and service providers.
The speakers then opened up the conversation for questions from attendees.
Nancy Fennell, assistant director and director of the Behavioral Health Clinical Learning Collaborative in New Hampshire, shared how her profession relates to this research.
“What I’m really finding out, just in our little state of New Hampshire, is how many initiatives are working on building peer support,” Fennell said. “How the hell can we unite these groups?”
Walker admitted that he doesn’t have a definitive answer yet. The separate initiatives are unwanted side effects of the new focus on behavioral health, she said, and there haven’t been many opportunities for coordination, despite increasing funding in the field.
“What was a ‘behavioral health funding’ need four years ago will now be a ‘behavioral health workforce’ need,” Walker said.
Sarah Laterza, a graduate student at the BC School of Social Work, shared her thoughts on the many aspects of social work research.
“I originally came to this talk because I wanted to learn more about health disparities in older adults, especially since most of my classes focus on children and families,” Laterza said. “However, what I found most interesting is how this research can use so many different professions. It really shows how social work is an interdisciplinary field.”
