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Severe mental illness and last year of life: Identifying service use from a National Health Service digital dashboard in Wales, UK
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Fiona Lugg-Widger ,
Ben Hannigan ,
Viktoriya Velikova ,
Anthony Byrne
Journal of Mental Health, Volume: 34, Issue: 5, Pages: 549 - 555
Swansea University Author:
Michael Coffey
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© 2025 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND).
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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/09638237.2025.2512306
Abstract
Background: Systematic reviews have identified variation and inequity in care provision for people with pre-existing severe mental illnesses who have palliative or end-of-life care needs. Aim: To analyse service use and variation for people with severe mental illness in the last year of life in Wale...
| Published in: | Journal of Mental Health |
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| ISSN: | 0963-8237 1360-0567 |
| Published: |
Informa UK Limited
2025
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| Online Access: |
Check full text
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa69373 |
| Abstract: |
Background: Systematic reviews have identified variation and inequity in care provision for people with pre-existing severe mental illnesses who have palliative or end-of-life care needs. Aim: To analyse service use and variation for people with severe mental illness in the last year of life in Wales. Methods: This is an observational retrospective cohort study between 2018 – 2023 using anonymised linked routinely collected health datasets within a data dashboard. Results: We identified n=4722 (2.3%) deaths with ICD-10 codes for severe mental illness for the period 2018-2023. As a group people with severe mental illness die younger, are in receipt of specialist palliative care at lower rates, die more often in institutional settings rather than their own homes and comorbidity indicates more unscheduled care use in the last year of life. Conclusions: Unscheduled care use in the last year of life is associated with comorbidity indicating opportunities for upstream intervention to improve treatment, experience and quality of life for people with severe mental illness. Further investigation such as mixed methods approaches to examine experiences of those with severe mental illness in the last year of life, and the human and systems factors influencing the nature and effectiveness of unscheduled delivery, are needed. |
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| Keywords: |
Mental illness, end-of-life care, dashboard systems |
| College: |
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences |
| Funders: |
This study/research is supported by Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) through the provision of data. |
| Issue: |
5 |
| Start Page: |
549 |
| End Page: |
555 |