Heal Initiative – Prevention

Abstract

Healthy active lives (HeAL); an international consensus on the importance of protecting the cardiometabolic health of young people experiencing their first episode of psychosis.

A gold standard for success in treating any illness is impact on mortality. Despite many advances in our understanding of psychosis over the last few decades, those affected still face a 15-20 year life expectancy gap mainly accounted for by poor physical health. Compared with the general population, higher rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes contribute to a widening health gap; cardiovascular disease is now the most frequent cause of premature death for people with psychosis, being more common than suicide.

Efforts to date have tended to concentrate on treating the end-points of these physical disorders. This may be missing an opportunity for disease prevention and in an effort to address these issues, the Healthy Active Lives (HeAL) declaration (http://www.iphys.org.au/, www.iphys.org.au/)argues that it is time to extend the early intervention paradigm toembrace a far more holistic body mind approach, commenced from theonset of psychosis. This presentation will highlight the rationale for eAL derived from evidence for cardiometabolic disturbances arising in the early stages of psychosis and some of the ways preventive approaches can be targeted on increased rates of tobacco use, inactivity, poor nutrition, and the weight gain and cardiometabolic disturbance evident soon after antipsychotic treatment initiation.