Bipolar disorder linked to earlier death in older adults
Average survival over a 7.5-year window was 106.4 days shorter in adults with bipolar disorder than in age- and sex-matched controls.
Limit: The study assessed all-cause mortality and did not record specific causes of death
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Researchers compared 227 adults aged 50 or older with bipolar disorder with 681 age- and sex-matched adults from a general-population cohort in the Netherlands. This prospective observational study assessed deaths from all causes over eight years.
During follow-up, 37 participants with bipolar disorder (16.3%) and 138 controls (20.3%) died. Despite the lower overall proportion of deaths in the bipolar group, analyses that considered when deaths occurred linked bipolar disorder to earlier mortality. The relative rate of death during follow-up was higher in the bipolar group, with a hazard ratio of 1.72. Average survival within a 7.5-year window was 2,500.7 days in the bipolar group and 2,607.2 days among controls, a reported difference of 106.4 days.
Why it matters
The authors called for strategies addressing physical health and lifestyle risks that can be changed to reduce premature mortality in older adults with bipolar disorder.
Caveats
The observational design cannot establish that bipolar disorder caused earlier death. These results concern adults aged 50 and older in two Dutch cohorts, not younger people.
The paper
GGZ inGeest; Utrecht University
The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, Jul 21, 2026
