A man with severe mental illness dies suddenly at the age of 52 . He had been living successfully in the community for 5 years without a hospitalization and worked for the past 6 months in the first job he had held for more than 20 years.
His family is in shock, having been caught completely by surprise by his death, and asks why this has happened. Which of the following responses accurately reflects the research on mortality and serious mental illness and best addresses the family's question? a. A certain number of people die young from undetected diseases, and it's just one of those sad things that happens sometimes to unlucky people..
b. Mentally ill people tend to die much younger than others, perhaps because they do not take as good care of their health, or smoke more, or are overweight..
c. We will have to wait for the autopsy to see for sure what happened. He had had some medical problems, but we were not expecting this..
d. We are all surprised. He had been doing so well, and he sees the nurse every other week; all we knew was wrong was that he was overweight..