Diagnostic overshadowing is when physical health symptoms are wrongly put down to someone’s mental illness, meaning real physical health problems can be missed or ignored. 

How does diagnostic overshadowing affect people with mental illness?

When diagnostic overshadowing occurs: 

• Physical illnesses can go undetected.
• Serious health conditions may not be diagnosed early.
• People might not get the right treatment.
• Access to timely, effective healthcare is reduced.
• Health conditions can get worse before they are found. 

This can lead to poorer physical health and is one reason why people with severe mental illness often have shorter lives. 

People living with severe mental health problems dying prematurely compared with their peers 

Everyone deserves to have their physical health taken seriously. Overlooking physical symptoms can have life-changing consequences. 

But people living with severe mental health problems are nearly five times as likely to die before 75 than the average population, according to NHS data, with physical health problems being overlooked playing a key contributing role in this. 

This has to change. That is why we are calling for a national, preventative, integrated approach to physical and mental healthcare, so that people with severe mental illness no longer die years earlier than the rest of the population.