Serious Mental Illness

Optimize diabetes care for people living with Serious Mental Illness

One in 20 adults in USA experience serious mental illness (SMI) such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and related psychiatric conditions each year. Relative to the general population where 10.5% have type 2 diabetes (T2DM), people with SMI are known to experience a high burden (8-40%) of T2DM. Among those with T2DM, people with SMI have 22-58% higher risk of major cardiovascular events and are 4.2 times more likely to die prematurely from diabetes complications. It is well known that the risk of T2DM and dysglycemia is especially high among those who are prescribed second-generation antipsychotics (atypical antipsychotics or AAP), especially olanzapine and clozapine but less so for ziprasidone, aripiprazole and lurasidone

This is ongoing work with Dr. Robert O. Cotes, Dr. David Goldsmith, and Dr. Rachel Waford. Jiali Guo is the primary analyst.

Addressing care gaps for people living with serious mental illness.

Publications

  1. Varghese 2025 International Journal of Obesity on weight change after prescription of incretin mimetics.

Abstracts

  1. Guo 2025 ADA Scientific Sessions
  2. Guo 2025 AMIA Annual Symposium

Getting Involved

These projects are ideal for MD or doctoral students interested in the intersection of mental and metabolic health.

  1. Metabolic and inflammatory heterogeneity in patients with SMI on treatment response
  2. Target trial approaches for treatment effect of co-prescription of second-generation antipsychotics and glucose lowering medications on emergency room admissions and cardiometabolic health

Pre-requisites

  1. Proficiency in R or Python
  2. Required Coursework: EPI 560 Epidemiologic Methods IV, EPI 568 Bias Analysis, Longitudinal Analysis (BIOS 502 or BIOS 525 or BIOS 526)