Disparities in cancer screening in people with mental illness across the world versus the general population: prevalence and comparative meta-analysis including 4 717 839 people.

Background: Since people with mental illness are more likely to die from cancer, we assessed whether people with mental illness undergo less cancer screening compared with the general population.

Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched PubMed and PsycINFO, without a language restriction, and hand-searched the reference lists of included studies and previous reviews for observational studies from database inception until May 5, 2019. We included all published studies focusing on any type of cancer screening in patients with mental illness; and studies that reported prevalence of cancer screening in patients, or comparative measures between patients and the general population.