Diabetes is deadlier for people with severe mental illness that it is for mentally stable people, a new research has claimed. According to the study conducted by the University of California, people with severe mental illness are more than twice as likely to have Type 2 diabetes, with even higher risks among patients who are African American or Hispanic. Among more than 15,000 patients with severe mental illness, 28.1 percent had Type 2 diabetes, the researchers reported in the study.

In contrast, 12.2 percent of the general population is estimated to have the disease. Among racial minorities with severe mental illness, the incidences were 36.9 percent for Hispanics, 36.3 percent for African Americans and 30.7 percent for Asians - versus 25.1 percent for whites. The study, which was led by first author Christina Mangurian, followed her previous research that linked severe mental illness to low levels of testing for diabetes, low rates of HIV testing - despite a significantly higher likelihood of being HIV positive - and, among women, low rates of screening for cervical cancer.