People affected by a psychotic illness are as open to screening and preventive health care as other patients, according to study results published in the May 24th issue of the British Medical Journal.

In the current study, investigators identified 224 people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or other chronic psychosis (excluding primary mood disorders) between the ages of 30 and 75 years who did not have existing ischemic heart disease. Their primary care physicians invited them to an appointment and cardiovascular health evaluation with a researcher. A control group of 424 patients without psychotic illness was randomly generated from computer records; they received the same invitation to participate in a health screening study.

Contact was made with a total of 495 eligible people: Slightly more than 40 percent (75 of 182, or 41.2 percent) of the group with a diagnosis of psychosis participated in the health screening compared with 47.9 percent (150 of 313) of the control group. The high level of participation by the group of psychiatric patients was unexpected: The researchers had hypothesized that people with severe mental illness would be less likely to respond than patients from the same community without psychosis.

The authors hope that the findings result in physicians in all specialties taking a more assertive approach to general and preventive physical health care for this at-risk population of people affected by severe mental illness.