This session accompanies the 2025 update to The Lancet Psychiatry Commission for Protecting the Physical Health of People with Mental Illness. People with mental illness have an increased risk of physical disease, as well as reduced access to adequate health care. Physical-health disparities are observed across all mental illnesses in all countries. The high rate of physical comorbidity, which often has poor clinical management, reduces life expectancy for people with mental illness, and increases the personal, social, and economic cost of mental illness across the lifespan.
The 2019 Lancet Psychiatry Commission provided a blueprint for protecting the physical health in people with mental illness. The 2025 update builds on this foundation, and provides in-depth guidance on lifestyle interventions and management of the physical side-effects of psychotropics. In this session, Dr Maria Kapi (London, UK) will reflect on her lived experience of mental illness and associated physical comorbidity and medication side-effects. She will emphasise the importance of psychiatrists considering both body and mind in their treatment approaches. Dr Katarzyna Machaczek (Sheffield, UK) will provide an overview of lifestyle interventions in mental healthcare with an emphasis on implementation. Dr Toby Pillinger (London, UK) will provide a structured systems-based overview of side-effects associated with antipsychotic, antidepressant, and mood stabiliser treatment. He will then describe evidence-based management approaches with a focus on day-to-day clinical practice.
Learning objectives
By attending this session you will:
- Understand the importance of managing physical comorbidity to people with lived experience of mental illness
- Understand how to effectively implement lifestyle interventions in mental healthcare, focussing on tailoring programmes to individual needs and approaches in resource-limited settings
- Understand how to routinely manage physical side-effects of psychotropics, considering lived experience input and the challenges of such an approach in resource-limited settings.
Speakers
Chair: Dr Joseph Firth, University of Manchester, Manchester and Sophia Davis, Senior Editor, Lancet Psychiatry
Dr Maria Kapi, King's College London, London
Dr Katarzyna Machaczek, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield
Dr Toby Pillinger, King's College London, London
Availability
This webinar is part of the Congress webinar 2025 package. If you attended all four days of Congress, you will have access to these as part of your Congress package. Otherwise the Congress webinar 2025 package can be purchased below.
