Physical health checks for people with severe mental illness during COVID-19

People living with severe and prolonged mental illness in England die 15–20 years earlier than the general population.1 This premature mortality is mostly explained by preventable and controllable non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. Accordingly, NHS England’s 2016 Five Year Forward View for Mental Health aimed to address this inequity by increasing early detection and treatment of physical ill-health in people living with severe mental illness (SMI) through annual full and comprehensive physical health checks. The vast majority of these take place in primary care and necessitate face-to-face …