Cancer in the Mentally Ill

Smoking and Malignancy in Schizophrenia

“…Some workers have found a lower than expected incidence of cancer in psychiatric patients (Peller & Stephenson, 1941: Achterberg, et a!, 1949, but others have failed to demonstrate any significant association between the two general groups of disorders (Innes & Millar, 1970;Odegaard, 1952).…”

Cancer Death Risk in Hospitalized Mental Patients

“…Perrin and Pierce examined a series of nine studies using proportionate mortality that drew the conclusion of reduced cancer mortality in mental patients, and another series of eight studies using absolute death rate, seven of which drew the opposite conclusion of increased cancer mortality. In the eighth, the author explains the lower cancer death rate among the patients by the difference between the population base rate which should have been used, that is, that of the Southern states, where most 966 of the patients were born and raised, and that of New York City, whose base rate was actually used (9). This explanation sounds reasonable.…”