[High mortality following psychosis: not only due to suicide]

In the 1980s about 8.5% of patients in northern Netherlands with a psychotic disorder died due to suicide within five years of follow-up. Liemburg, Castelein and colleagues investigated whether this percentage had recently decreased. They found suicide in 2.4% of patients with recent psychosis after an average follow-up of 5 years. Although causality cannot be inferred from a naturalistic study such as theirs, it is plausible that the decreased suicide rate is associated with improvements in the care for psychotic patients. Preventing suicide is invaluable. However, given the alarmingly high mortality due to somatic diseases in patients with schizophrenia, other measures to substantially decrease the high mortality associated with schizophrenia are also warranted.