The Question What do evidence suggest as the risk of violence by individuals with different diagnoses? Violence is a broad term encompassing a variety of behaviours. In this narrative review,  Daniel Whiting, Paul Lichtenstein, Seena Fazel looked at officially registered violent crimes ( arrests / conviction) ie in the context of contact with criminal justice system and its associations with mental illnesses. The public perceive violence in people with mental illness.This perception contributes to stigma towards mental illness . Stigma obviously is associated negative consequenc ..read more

The Question Obesity is a major public health problem. In those with severe mental illness, the prevalence of obesity is twice that of the general population. Obesity, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, and smoking contribute to the three fold increase in mortality observed in severe mental illness. This translates in to a 15 year reduction in life expectancy in this group. Antipsychotic medications are one of the established causes of weight gain. So clinicians and patients always look for weight neutral treatment options. This is a very difficult process as one need to find an effective antipsycho ..read more

The study Socioeconomic status is a powerful predictor of ill health. It is already known that having two or more diseases and developing multimorbidity is more common among the poor. Prof Mika Kivimäki et al investigated the temporal sequence in relation to poor socio-economic status and the emergence of a large group of mental disorders by combining data from two large Finnish cohort studies. The combined sample had 109246 participants. The relationship pattern was then checked with a third cohort ( the famous Whitehall 2 UK cohort). Residential area deprivation ( an aggregate measure of lo ..read more