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‘Diagnostic overshadowing’: worse physical health care for people with mental illness
Author(s) -
Jones Simon,
Howard Louise,
Thornicroft Graham
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
acta psychiatrica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.849
H-Index - 146
eISSN - 1600-0447
pISSN - 0001-690X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0447.2008.01211.x
Subject(s) - psychiatry , psychology , physical illness , mental health , mental illness , physical health , medicine , gerontology
It is now well established that people with mental illness die prematurely and have significantly higher medical co-morbidity compared with the general population (1), and that there are a number of possible reasons for this as discussed by Leucht et al. in the November issue 2007 of the Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (2). One of these may be diagnostic overshadowing , a process by which physical symptoms are misattributed to mental illness. This concept has received little attention in the psychiatric literature but mental health service users have reported its widespread occurrence (3) and its potential impact has been emphasized in two recent reports (4, 5).