The Impact of Preexisting Severe Mental Disorders on Cancer Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (Riis et al., 2025)

A significant new meta-analysis published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica has cast a stark light on a major health disparity: the survival gap for cancer patients who have pre-existing severe mental disorders (SMD). Analyzing data across 25 major studies, researchers determined that patients with pre-existing SMD face a 37% higher relative risk of dying from cancer compared to the general population. Crucially, the study found that this risk is most pronounced for individuals suffering from psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, who face a staggering 47% higher mortality risk when diagnosed with cancer.

What drives this alarming statistic isn't necessarily that cancers are biologically more aggressive in these patients. Instead, the analysis points toward systemic failures in healthcare delivery. The primary culprits identified are delayed diagnoses—often due to "diagnostic overshadowing," where medical professionals mistakenly attribute new physical symptoms to a patient’s existing mental illness—and significant disparities in subsequent care. The data reveals that patients with psychosis are frequently diagnosed at advanced, harder-to-treat stages and are statistically less likely to receive "gold standard" therapies, such as aggressive surgical debulking or full chemotherapy regimens, often due to clinical concerns over treatment adherence or drug interactions.

These findings serve as an urgent wake-up call for the medical community to bridge the historical divide between physical and mental healthcare. The authors argue strongly that closing this mortality gap requires an immediate shift toward integrated care models where oncologists and psychiatrists collaborate closely on patient management. Ensuring equitable survival rates means moving beyond treating just the tumor and instead treating the whole person, ensuring that a previous psychiatric diagnosis never acts as a barrier to receiving life-saving oncological care.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.70054