“People’s initial reaction to this was disbelief,” said Katlyn Nemani, a neuropsychiatrist at NYU School of Medicine and the study’s lead author.

Some researchers initially questioned whether this disparate mortality rate could be explained by poor physical health or poor access to health care in people with schizophrenia. But Nemani’s study controlled for those factors: All of the patients in the study were tested and treated for COVID, and they received care from the same doctor in the same healthcare system.

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The study then started with countries with universal healthcare systems – UK, Denmark, Israel, South Korea – have similar findings: People with schizophrenia have a nearly three-fold higher risk of death.A sort of A recent study From the UK, published in December 2021, found almost five times the risk.

“You have to wonder, is there something inherent in the disease itself that’s causing this?” Nemani asked.

The immune dysfunction that causes severe COVID in people with schizophrenia may be responsible for their psychotic symptoms, Nemani said. This suggests that schizophrenia is not just a brain disorder but an immune system disorder, she said.

Although researchers have explore this theorydata from the pandemic sheds light on this in a new way, opening the door to discovery.

“This is a very rare opportunity to study the potential relationship between the immune system and psychiatric disorders by looking at the effects of a single virus at a single point in time,” Nemani said. “This could lead to interventions to improve medical conditions associated with the disease, while also contributing to our understanding of the disease itself and what we should do to treat it.”

In the long term, it could lead to new immunotherapies that may work better than current antipsychotics.

For now, advocates want data on risk to be more widely shared and taken more seriously. They want people with schizophrenia and their caregivers to know they should take extra precautions. Early in the pandemic, they had hoped that people with schizophrenia would be vaccinated as a priority.

“It was a challenge,” said Brandon Staglin, who has schizophrenia. one hearta mental health advocacy group based in Napa Valley.

When he and other advocates first saw Nemani’s data in early 2021, they began lobbying public health officials to prioritize vaccine access. They want the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add schizophrenia to the list of high-risk diseases for COVID, just as it did with cancer and diabetes.

But they heard crickets.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Starling said. “Obviously, there is a higher risk of schizophrenia.”

In several other countries, including the UK and Germany, People with serious mental illness are given priority A vaccine will be available from February 2021.In America, though, until people get Booster for October In 2021, the CDC added schizophrenia to its list of priorities.

“We were happy when that happened, but we wanted to move faster,” Starling said.

Mental illness is always like that, Myrick said.

“It’s like we have to remind people,” she said. “It’s just kind of, ‘Oh, yeah, oh, right, I forgot.'”

This story is part of a partnership that includes KFC, NPRand KHN.

Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service. It is an independent editorial project of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.