Mortality Among Patients with Mental Disease

It has long been known that death rates among patients with mental disease are greatly in excess of those of the entire population. Despite all that modern medicine can offer, the death rate of the insane remains relatively high, as evidenced from statistics concerning rates of mortality and causes of death among patients under treatment in the New York civil state hospitals during the three fiscal years July 1, 1928-June 30, 1931. Even when due allowance is made for age differences in the two populations, the death rate of the patients remains in excess in the ratio of almost 5 to 1. The death rates are highest in the organic psychoses and lowest in the functional group. There are marked differences in the relative distribution of the causes of death. In the general population of up-state New York the leading causes of death are, in order, diseases of the heart,