Linking body and mind

Linking body and mind

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction to psychiatric medication side effects? This episode of All In The Mind takes a hard look at how severe mental illness can drastically shorten life expectancy, not just through suicide, but through heart disease, diabetes and other physical health problems that often get ignored.

You’ll hear psychiatrist Jackie Curtis explain that young people with psychosis can die 15–25 years earlier than their peers, largely due to rapid weight gain and metabolic issues linked to antipsychotic medication. She bluntly calls the 15–20 year gap in life expectancy "a human rights issue" and pushes for mental health services to treat physical health as “core business”, not an afterthought.

The program follows Julio De La Torre, a Colombian aerospace engineering student and surfer whose manic episode led to months in hospital, six ECT treatments and a 30kg weight gain. He describes thinking change was "impossible" until he joined the Bondi early psychosis centre’s Keeping Body in Mind project, combining medication monitoring, diet support and exercise.

He’s now back to surfing and says, "If there is anything I can tell anyone, it's possible to have a normal life after having a mental illness." Retired UK GP and mental health advocate David Shires adds a powerful family perspective, recalling his daughter Mary’s extreme weight gain on antipsychotics and the "double whammy" of stigma from both mental illness and obesity.

Peer mentor Janelle Abbott shares how gaining 30kg on medication crushed her confidence, and how discovering exercise and nutrition changed her mood, body and sense of possibility. The tone is frank but hopeful, aimed at anyone interested in serious mental illness—families, clinicians, and people living with diagnoses—who wants to see the gap between mind and body finally taken seriously. It might leave you wondering: is your care team treating your body as carefully as your mind?