Psychosis as a multisystem disorder of aberrant aging

Journal article

Psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and affective psychosis, affect ~3% of the population and typically emerge in early adulthood. Cardiometabolic disease accounts for much of the 20-year life-expectancy gap in psychosis. Evidence indicates potentially causal processes, often seen in aging, act within and beyond the brain, and before the onset of treatment; these include inflammation, metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunction. Here we synthesize evidence and propose a framework that proposes psychosis as a multisystem disorder of accelerated aging, and outline implications for aging-targeted interventions.

Authors: Upthegrove, R; Couch, ACM; de Marvao, A; Perry, BI; Corsi-Zuelli, F

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: npj aging
• Publication date: 2026-05-29
• DOI: 10.1038/s41514-026-00409-2
• EISSN: 2731-6068
• ISSN: 2731-6068
• Language: English
• Keywords: Disease; Psychosis; Multisystem disease; Population; Affect (linguistics); Schizophrenia (object-oriented programming)