Development and policy Health education and prevention for people with severe mental illness: a cross-sectional study of general practice computer records Simon de Lusignan Senior Lecturer, Primary Care Informatics, Division of Community Health Sciences, St George’s, University of London, UK Tom Chan Director of Mental Health Services for Older People, Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Trust, Lyne, Chertsey, Surrey, UK Alan Cohen Director of Primary Care, The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, London, UK Lavanya Thana Research Assistant Neil Dhoul Research Assistant Nigel Hague Research Fellow Jeremy van Vlymen Research Assistant Primary Care Informatics, Division of Community Health Sciences, St George’s, University of London, UK ABSTRACT Background Although UK general practice is highly computerised and data from it have been widely used for quality improvement and research in many diseases areas, most data about the prevalence and quality of management of mental illness come from secondary care-based studies. Many of these studies suggest that people with mental health problems have an excess of cardio- vascular and respiratory disease. Objective We carried out this study to determine whether routinely collected general practice data are of sufficient quality to be used for quality im- provement, health service planning and research. Setting Twelve computerised general practices in West Surrey with a combined list size of 117 000 patients. Method Audit criteria were developed within a primary care research network. A data set was identified which would enable quality of care to be assessed. MIQUEST (Morbidity Information and Export Syntax – a Department of Health- sponsored data extraction application) was used to extract anonymised data, which was trans- ferred to a relational database and then analysed using a statistical package. Results The standardised prevalence of cardio- vascular and respiratory disease for the popu- lation was 1.73%. Respiratory disease was more common in people with severe mental illness (SMI); 22.6% had respiratory illness, compared with 16.4%. Patients with SMI and coronary heart disease (CHD) were much less likely to have their Primary Care Mental Health 2005;3:00–00 # 2005 Radcliffe Publishing