I would like to underscore a point that emerges from the important paper by Saha and colleagues (an excellent summary is provided above by Victoria Wilcox). Currently the focus on inequalities/disparities in public health has paid attention mainly to socioeconomic and ethnic/racial disparities. This paper and some other recent papers draw attention to the disparities in health between people with and without severe mental illness. I view this disparity as being in large part rooted in discrimination experienced by people with mental illness, rather than being inherent in their illness. People with a severe mental illness should have the right to high quality health care and prevention, even if care and prevention has to be tailored to their special needs so that it can be utilized.

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