# Are there any lethal mental illnesses? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 23, 2005, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452 "2005-02-23T01:22:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/1 "2005-02-23T01:22:39Z")
Title says it all. Is there any psychological disorder that will kill you (deaths from suicide don’t count) or lead to deleterious physical damage (again, self-inflicted damage doesn’t count) or shortened lifespan? And if so, what is the actual cause of death or disease in those cases? ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/2 "2005-02-23T01:32:35Z")
Is alzheimers considered a mental illness? (Obviously it effect the mind, but I’m not sure of the precise definition of mental illness.) I’m pretty sure it’s eventually fatal. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/3 "2005-02-23T01:36:48Z")
It is a little difficult to define the boundaries of psychological disorders because that assumes that the disease is in the “mind” whatever that is. They more we learn about mental illnesses, the more we learn that all of the major ones have some biological correlates or causes. Give that: [Alzheimer’s Disease](http://www.alz.org/) is a brain disease that kills. If you start to think Alzheimer’s doesn’t count for this question then you need to stop and ask yourself why not. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Mad Cow disease) is a neurological disease that can affect humans. It alters behavior and kills. Rabies might qualify. There is a disease called [Kuru](http://www.disease-reference.com/Kuru.htm) (New Guinea laughing sickness) that is isolated but kills in days. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/4 "2005-02-23T01:40:27Z")
Don’t forget familial fatal insomnia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal\_familial\_insomnia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia) ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/5 "2005-02-23T01:53:38Z")
Alzheimer’s would definitely count. (I didn’t know it was fatal, I only thought it caused dementia and that patients were killed by the process of aging.) Kuru and Mad Cow wouldn’t, however, since they’re caused by a virus and not by any idiopathic chemical imbalances. ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/6 "2005-02-23T02:08:21Z")
> [@continuity eror](#): > > Alzheimer’s would definitely count. (I didn’t know it was fatal, I only thought it caused dementia and that patients were killed by the process of aging.) Kuru and Mad Cow wouldn’t, however, since they’re caused by a virus and not by any idiopathic chemical imbalances. I thought they were caused by a malformed protein. ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/7 "2005-02-23T02:17:37Z")
> [@mks57](#): > > I thought they were caused by a malformed protein. Indeed they are. [Prions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion), to be exact. **Shagnasty** ’s link mentions them. I’m not in the sciences, so I don’t really understand all of the processes involved with them. Wikipedia, however, distinguishes them from viruses, which is what you wanted to know. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/8 "2005-02-23T02:23:17Z")
Anorexia ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/9 "2005-02-23T02:35:31Z")
> [@Qadgop the Mercotan](#): > > Don’t forget familial fatal insomnia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal\_familial\_insomnia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia) Couldn’t they give those patients drugs to force them to sleep? Or is it more complicated than that? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/10 "2005-02-23T02:38:13Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > Couldn’t they give those patients drugs to force them to sleep? Or is it more complicated than that? Drugs can make them unconscious. That’s _not_ the same thing as sleeping. And besides, it doesn’t halt the progressive neurological damage. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/11 "2005-02-23T04:55:15Z")
> [@](#): > > Give that: Alzheimer’s Disease is a brain disease that kills. If you start to think Alzheimer’s doesn’t count for this question then you need to stop and ask yourself why not. Logical, but not consistent with the history of psychiatry. One mental illness turned out to be tertiary syphilis, but once it was understood as such syphilis was not categorized as a mental illness. Hypothyroidism symptoms were (and still often accidentally _are_) conceptualized as mental illnesses, but once this was understood, hypothyroidism was treated in the endocrinology unit, not the psych unit. Likewise with epilepsy. If there was something substantially useful they could do about Alzheimer’s disease, they’d take it away from psychiatry and put it in neurology or something. It stays in psychiatry for now because for all intents and purposes it is treated as a psychiatric allment, i.e., you address the illness by controlling the patient with the coercive force of staff rules and with drugs used to maintain order and keep folks tractable. The categories of mental illness that have remained in psychiatry’s wing for a long long time are the ones that have never really yielded up a true medical etiological explanation, and which remain basically just constellations of troublesome symptoms that we don’t really know what to do about. It’s not a character flaw or a lack of brilliance on the part of psychiatrists (although I’ve met my share who had really frightening character flaws); it’s a side-effect of the _ahem_ split personality of the discipline itself. Psychiatry functions simultaneously as the legitimators of our auxiliary-police functions, by which we remove from society disturbing and troubling people who haven’t actually committed any crimes, and as the designated treatment of choice for whatever conditions may cause individuals to have emotional or cognitive impairments (minus, as I said, those for which we have actual understandings. Brain tumor patients don’t get treated on the psych ward unless no one knows their behavior is due to a brain tumor.) The first function poisons the well and puts a shadow of dubious reputation over the profession which causes other branches of medicine to lay claim to ailments that can actually be treated, which trend then exacerbates the shadow by removing from the realm of psychiatry anything that medical research can actually get its tongs around. ---
**Author:** ![uglybeech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/82dd89/32.png) [@uglybeech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uglybeech)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/12 "2005-02-23T05:23:48Z")
I really don’t see what idiopathic chemical imbalance means. I think that’s just a euphemism for “nobody knows.” Schizophrenia is considered “psychiatric” but a lot of people think it’s related to exposure to a virus. Would you include Huntington’s? Parkinsons? What about MS? ---
**Author:** ![fifty-six](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@fifty-six](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fifty-six)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/13 "2005-02-23T06:01:32Z")
I am not sure but could any of these count? Bolimia Anorexia Alcoholism Drug Addiction Deppression ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/14 "2005-02-23T06:02:33Z")
Getting back to the OP … Depression can certainly be lethal. Although many lay people sometimes seem to have an image of the depressed individual as being “philosophically melancholy”, that couldn’t be further from the truth, at least in severe cases. Left untreated, especially in the elderly, severe depression leads to things like starvation, immobility, and profound generalized weakness, and these in turn beget potentially lethal problems such as infection and blood clots. There is also a growing body of evidence to indicate that the presence of depression makes the prognosis of associated diseases that much worse (e.g. [heart disease](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14622867), e.g. [diabetes](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/26/10/2952), e.g. [cancer](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12893103)). ---
**Author:** ![fifty-six](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@fifty-six](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fifty-six)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/15 "2005-02-23T06:02:49Z")
Sorry I dident read the question correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_You\_Big\_Red\_Fire\_Engine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/eada6e/32.png) [@Go\_You\_Big\_Red\_Fire\_Engine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_You_Big_Red_Fire_Engine)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/16 "2005-02-23T06:13:06Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Getting back to the OP … > > Depression can certainly be lethal. Although many lay people sometimes seem to have an image of the depressed individual as being “philosophically melancholy”, that couldn’t be further from the truth, at least in severe cases. > > Left untreated, especially in the elderly, severe depression leads to things like starvation, immobility, and profound generalized weakness, and these in turn beget potentially lethal problems such as infection and blood clots. > > There is also a growing body of evidence to indicate that the presence of depression makes the prognosis of associated diseases that much worse (e.g. [heart disease](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14622867), e.g. [diabetes](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/26/10/2952), e.g. [cancer](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12893103)). I’d say that would be self-inflicted. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/17 "2005-02-23T06:28:15Z")
Tertiary Syphilis. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/18 "2005-02-23T07:52:51Z")
[quote] **Fire Engine** : I’d say that would be self-inflicted. Has anyone figured out exactly how they do that? Is it a psychic thing – mind over matter? Do old people just learn to do it naturally? How do they self-inflict diabetes and cancer? That must take a lot of concentration and will power. What do you think makes people decide to self-inflict starvation? ---
**Author:** ![inkleberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f17d59/32.png) [@inkleberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inkleberry)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/19 "2005-02-23T08:12:05Z")
> [@continuity eror](#): > > Title says it all. Is there any psychological disorder that will kill you (deaths from suicide don’t count) or lead to deleterious physical damage (again, self-inflicted damage doesn’t count) or shortened lifespan? And if so, what is the actual cause of death or disease in those cases? Yes. Wilson’s Disease. Too much freaking copper from genetic problem. You go bonkers. Irreversible. Can kill. Case studies from my grad level psychopathology class made me avoid peas for a week. Insommnia (in _extreme_ cases). Huntington’s Chorea. Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s. Other flavours of rare dementias. Pica can be by proxy (eat enough cigarette butts and you will die). Munchausen’s and Munch. By Proxy (especially MBP for the victims). Fetishes that involve autoerotic suffocation. I’d consider depression to be potentially fatal, particularly bipolar forms. But that may be a technicality for the purposes of this thread. Schizophrenia and psychotic breaks cause progressive brain damage, one very good reason to get help immediately and comply with meds. These are off the top of my shrink head. I’ll likely remember more after I sleep. I will also explain manner of death for all above, as I will be less lazy then. ---
**Author:** ![inkleberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f17d59/32.png) [@inkleberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inkleberry)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452/20 "2005-02-23T08:18:39Z")
[QUOTE=uglybeechSchizophrenia is considered “psychiatric” but a lot of people think it’s related to exposure to a virus. [/QUOTE] No no no no! In UTERO exposure to flu by mother MAY be related to later schiz. The most conclusive data is related to genetics. Getting the flu, say, at 22, won’t do it. However, there IS a link between viral infections and onset of Alzheimer’s. Although it ISN’T causal, but may be a catalyst. > [@](#): > > What about MS? I have MS. Only certain very nasty forms are fatal. It is NOT a mental illness by any stretch. It is a neurological autoimmune disorder. Sometimes depression is a symptom. But whether the depression is caused by nerve damage or the result of suddenly having things be all sorts of fucked up physically, no one is sure. But not all MS involves depression certainly. And the MAJORITY of people with MS live full functional and equally long lives. Annette Funicello and Richard Pryor are extreme cases and are not the norm at ALL. MS ignorance is a major annoyance of mine. Fills with grrr. :mad: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-lethal-mental-illnesses/291452.md?page=2)