Mental Illness and Vulnerability

[HereSince1628]

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/mental-illness-and-vulnerability/

Compared with the rest of the population, people {in Sweden} with mental illness may be at sharply increased risk of dying by homicide, a new study has found.

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After controlling for age, education level, income and other factors, they found that people with mental illness were almost five times as likely to be a victim of murder as a person without a psychiatric diagnosis. The study appeared online last week in the journal BMJ.

The risk was highest among those with substance use disorders — nine times that of the general population. Those with personality disorders had three times the risk, people with depression two and a half times, and those with anxiety or schizophrenia about twice the risk of being murdered, compared with people without mental illness.

The lead author, Dr. Casey Crump, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford, said the findings were consistent with those from smaller studies done in the United States.

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