Key strategies include routine physical health screening, prevention and ongoing monitoring of physical disorders, addressing lifestyle risk factors and substance use, and ensuring early identification and treatment of physical comorbidities. It is also essential to balance treatment benefits and risks by selecting effective and metabolically safer treatments for mental disorders, avoiding unnecessary discontinuation, and engaging patients in shared decision-making. Integrated and collaborative care models, such as liaison psychiatry and close coordination with primary care and specialist services, support comprehensive and coordinated management. Collectively, these actions should aim to improve quality of life, functioning, and long-term health outcomes, adding life to years, not only years to life.
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Professor Dr. Merete Nordentoft introduces her work with the population of children of parents with schizophrenia. She also highlights the model implemented in Denmark, called VIA family, and why it is important to focus on children of parents living with schizophrenia.
Professor Dr. Christoph Correll highlights the recent innovations in the pharmacological treatment of schizophrenia.