Aged 37, Stephanie Allan has been taking antipsychotics for almost fourteen years. Suffering from schizophrenia, this Scottish mental health researcher noticed over the course of increasingly hot British summers that her condition was becoming critical: exhaustion, irritability and heatstroke punctuated her daily life. “People thought I was lazy”she says. This situation led her to question herself more deeply. In 2019, she began research and discovered that her condition was linked to her medications. “I am privileged. Through my work, I have been able to learn more, which is not the case for the majority of people with mental illness,” she specifies.
The academic put his finger on undesirable effects little known to some
antipsychotics prescribed for his illness, which affect his ability to sweat or regulate his body temperature. This increases its vulnerability to heat waves, like that of many individuals suffering from this type of pathologies. A study carried out during the heat dome episode in British Columbia (Canada) from June 25 to 1is July 2021 showed that, among twenty-five chronic diseases, schizophrenia was most strongly associated with a risk of death, linked to the dysfunction of the thermoregulation system, social isolation and the often low socio-economic level of the people affected. .
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