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People diagnosed with a mental illness tend to die 15 to 20 years earlier than those who do not have a mental illness. Many of these early deaths are from preventable physical illnesses like heart disease, cancer and respiratory disease (NHS England 2024). Parity of esteem has been a hot and important topic for over 10 years and is described as valuing mental health equally with physical health (Mitchel et al 2017; Hilton et al 2016; Sheikh 2022; NHS England 2024). Those who have a mental illness often experience diagnostic overshadowing (when their symptoms of physical illness are explained as mental illness when in fact there is a physical cause) and people can be wrongly turned away from receiving physical health support…