DEATH RATES IN PSYCHIATRIC OUTPATIENTS

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Abstract
Mortality rates in an ambulatory outpatient population of psychiatric patients treated with phenothiazine drugs were not higher than mortality rates (corrected by age, sex, and race) among the general population of Harris County, the county in which the study patients were being treated. Although not a rigorous "control" group, the adjusted general populations rates offered a yardstick by which to evaluate the death rates reported among the 1274 study patients followed over 2 1/2 years. In view of current concern over the effect of drugs on sudden deaths of cardiogenic origin, the death rate from "heart attack" was compared with the national rate and found to be virtually identical (2.5 per 1000 deaths as compared to a national rate of 2.9 per 1000).