Mortality in a follow-up of 500 psychiatric outpatients. I. Total mortality.

Total or all-cause mortality data were determined from a prospective study of 500 randomly selected psychiatric outpatients during a mean follow-up period of seven years. With the use of age-, sex-, and race-adjusted methods, a mortality nearly twice that expected from reference population rates was observed. Mortality was excessive among younger, but not older, patients; and among white men and women and black men, but not among black women. Certain psychiatric diagnoses (based on structured personal interviews performed at index and using explicit criteria) were associated with excess mortality: alcoholism, antisocial personality, drug addiction, homosexuality, organic brain syndrome, and schizophrenia. Excess mortality was not observed among patients with primary affective disorders, ie, disorders not antedated by nonaffective psychiatric illness.