Researchers estimate that around 1% of the world’s population have bipolar disorder. A recent study found that these individuals are at a six-fold higher risk of dying early than the general population due to alcohol-related diseases and suicide by over dosing on prescription medicines. The findings were published in the journal BMJ Mental Health on July 18.
The team analyzed data from 47,018 people with bipolar disorder from Finnish nationwide registers between 2004 and 2018. Around 57% of them were women. At the time of the study, their mean age was 38 years. The researchers then tracked the number of deaths that took place over a period of eight years. Out of the 47,018 people with bipolar disorder, 3300 or 7% of them died. At their time of death, their average age was 50 years. Around 65% of these deaths were among men. The cause of death was somatic in most cases (61%) and external in others (39%).
Alcohol caused the highest percentage of deaths among the somatic cases (29%). The second leading cause was heart disease and stroke (27%), followed by cancer (22%), respiratory diseases (4%), and diabetes (2%). Among those who died because of their alcohol consumption habits, liver diseases was the leading cause of deaths (48%). The second cause was accidental alcohol poisonings (28%) and lastly, alcohol dependence (10%).
When it came to external causes, the highest number of deaths were from suicide (58%). Close to half of those deaths by suicide occurred after overdosing on prescription medicines — including medicines commonly prescribed to treat bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder is characterized by volatile changes in an individual’s mood, energy levels, and ability to regulate their focus or concentration on day-to-day tasks. People experience episodes of severe depression and manic phases of different intensities. A 2020 study found that manic episodes might also include psychotic symptoms like paranoid thoughts, trouble thinking with clarity and determining what is real/factual and what is not, social withdrawal, and poor hygiene.
The cause of bipolar disorder is still unknown. But experts say the causes are a combination of genetics and environmental factors that could potentially alter brain function and chemistry.
“A key implication of the high number of excess deaths due to suicide is the need for personalised approaches to prediction and prevention,” the researchers observed. “Furthermore, we showed that the excess risk of death due to alcohol abuse was substantial in the older age groups. The role of alcohol abuse, and other substances, is likely underestimated here because alcohol is a contributory factor also in various other causes of death that are not explicitly defined as related to alcohol.”
“Alcohol-related morbidity and mortality are important determinants of absolute and relative health disparities in many high-income countries. We showed that in bipolar disorder, deaths due to alcohol-related causes were increased by about threefold compared with the general population,” they added. “Interventions aimed at preventing deaths related to substance abuse will thus likely have additional effects in reducing total excess mortality in bipolar disorder.”
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