Schizophrenia pinpointed as a key factor in heat deaths
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Loading... - Ryan Taylor
- 20 Mar 2023
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The mental illness tripled the risk of death during a searing 2021 heat wave, researchers find
On 25 June 2021, as a blanket of hot air descended on the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia’s provincial government issued a news release warning about the approaching heat wave’s dangers. The announcement drew attention to the elderly, children, people working or exercising outdoors, pets, and “people with emotional or mental health issues whose judgment may be impaired.”
Even so, more than 600 people died from the heat in British Columbia, as temperatures topped 40°C for days, shattering records in a region better known for temperatures usually half as high.
Now, new research has zeroed in on one of the hardest hit groups: people with schizophrenia. Epidemiologists combing through provincial health records found that, overall, those with mental health conditions seemed to have an elevated risk of a heat-related death. That was most severe for people with schizophrenia—a 200% increase compared with typical summers. “Those are really large numbers and … alarming,” says Peter Crank, a geographer at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater.
“We didn’t protect them,” laments Sarah Henderson, an environmental epidemiologist at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control who oversaw the research, published on 15 March in the journal GeoHealth. “These results show that people with schizophrenia need extra protection, extra support, and extra care.”
Earlier research had shown schizophrenia can make people more vulnerable to heat. Crank, for instance, recently reported a link between higher temperatures and hospitalization of people with schizophrenia in Phoenix. But the connection “just hasn’t made it to the mainstream,” Henderson says.
To examine which chronic health problems put people at greater risk during the heat wave, Henderson and her team paired a detailed accounting of deaths in British Columbia with medical records in Canada’s national health care system. They compared the medical histories of 1614 people who died during the 8-day heat wave with 6524 deaths on the same dates during the prior 9 years. The data covered 26 medical conditions, from heart disease to dementia to osteoporosis. Read More…
