By OPEN MINDS Circle
Half of people in Finland who were diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder had received specialty mental health services as children. The finding was based on a data for all 55,875 people born in 1987 in Finland, which maintains population health registries for each yearly cohort of births. Within this group, by age 28, 1,785 had been diagnosed with a psychotic or bipolar disorder. Among those who had not received any childhood outpatient specialty mental health services, the likelihood of being diagnosed with a psychotic or bipolar disorder was 1.8%. Among those who had received outpatient childhood specialty mental health services, the risk was 12.8%.
The risk of psychosis/bipolar disorder was higher for those who had received inpatient specialty mental health services in childhood, and higher still for those admitted for specialty psychiatric care as adolescents between ages 13 and 17. For those without a history of inpatient psychiatric care in childhood, about 2.3% were later diagnosed with a psychotic or bipolar disorder. For those with an inpatient admission, 24.0% were later diagnosed. For those admitted in adolescents, about 36.5% were later diagnosed.
Among those who received any childhood mental health specialty services, but received no specific mental health diagnosis, the risk of subsequently developing a diagnosed psychosis/bipolar disorder was as high as those who did receive a diagnosis in childhood. Those who later developed psychosis or bipolar disorder were 2.3 times as likely to have had an initial childhood diagnosis of depressive or other mood disorder, and 1.7 times as likely to have been diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorder.
These findings were reported in “Potential For Prediction Of Psychosis And Bipolar Disorder In Child And Adolescent Mental Health Services: A Longitudinal Register Study Of All People Born In Finland In 1987” by Ulla Lång, Hugh Ramsay, Kathryn Yates, and colleagues. The researchers analyzed health registry data from Finland for all those born in 1987. They linked each individual to register data on their health care contacts.
For more information, contact: Ulla Lång, Ph.D., Professor, Immunology & Microbial Science, School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Health Science Centre, Dublin, Ireland; Email: ulla.knaus@ucd.ie; Website: https://people.ucd.ie/ulla.knaus