Being diagnosed with a serious mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder often brings an overlooked challenge: rapid and sustained weight gain. This side-effect can raise the risk of diabetes, heart disease and early death – widening an already stark life expectancy gap.
A new study my colleagues and I conducted, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, is the largest and longest to track these changes in real-world settings. Analysing GP health records of over 113,000 adults in the UK between 1998 and 2020, we found that weight gain is not only common but predictable.
