Severe mental illness and receipt of acute cardiac care and mortality following myocardial infarction
Severe mental illness (SMI), which includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, affects about one in ten people. People with SMI die 10-20 years sooner than the general population, largely due to poorer physical health, in particular conditions such as heart attack. Survival after a heart attack is lower in people with SMI compared to those without. The reasons are poorly understood, but differences in care may contribute. We also do not know how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected any differences in receipt of care and risk of dying after a heart attack.
Using health data from England, we will study links between SMI and receipt of care and death following a heart attack, and whether these have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To help us to understand our findings and to provide insight into experiences of the care pathway, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, we will also interview patients with SMI who have had a heart attack and their families or carers, as well as relevant healthcare workers involved with hospital care for patients with a heart attack.
Our project will identify points in the care pathway where patients with SMI may be disadvantaged and/or where healthcare workers could be better supported to deliver the best possible care for these vulnerable patients. Identifying whether any differences in care have worsened as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic will inform future responses to outbreaks or other disruptions to delivery of care.
The issues stated above will be addressed in outputs from a number of related sub-projects. Follow the links below to view repositories containing the protocol, data curation and analysis code, and phenotyping algorithms and codelists for each sub-project:
Links to other outputs to follow, once they've been submitted to a preprint server and/or submitted to a journal.
This project has been approved by the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Approvals & Oversight Board (Project ID: CCU046).