Epidemiology of mental disorders in children and adolescents

By Kathleen R. Merikangas, Erin F. Nakamura, Ronald C. Kessler. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 2009

1,159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article provides a review of the magnitude of mental disorders in children and adolescents from recent community surveys across the world. Although there is substantial variation in the results depending upon the methodological characteristics of the studies, the findings converge in demonstrating that approximately one fourth of youth experience a mental disorder during the past year, and about one third across their lifetimes. Anxiety disorders are the most frequent conditions in children, followed by behavior disorders, mood disorders, and substance use disorders. Fewer than half of youth with current mental disorders receive mental health specialty treatment. However, those with the most severe disorders tend to receive mental health services. Current issues that are now being identified in the field of child psychiatric epidemiology include: refinement of classification and assessment, inclusion of young children in epidemiologic surveys, integration of child and adult psychiatric epidemiology, and evaluation of both mental and physical disorders in children.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental health, Speech and Hearing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a055e48da033d707aa3851996c9c864942218e00

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Aliza Werner-Seidler
2. J. Newby
3. Helen Christensen
4. Luis Augusto Rohde
5. G. Polanczyk
6. A. Calear
7. Y. Perry

In Psychiatry and Mental health

1. Helen Christensen
2. Giovanni Abrahão Salum
3. Luis Augusto Rohde
4. G. Polanczyk

In Speech and Hearing

1. Helen Christensen

Citations in the corpus

• Mental Health Surveillance Among Children — United States, 2013–2019 (2022, background): “Describing patterns of mental health services by subgroups might identify gaps in access to services or treatment for mental disorders and provide information to address health inequities (30,55,56).”
• Annual research review: A meta-analysis of the worldwide prevalence of mental disorders in children and adolescents. (2015, background): “In addition, it prompted the field’s attention to the limitations of current nosological schemes in capturing mental disorders and the need to move beyond them (Angold & Costello, 1995, 2009; Bird, 1996; Brandenburg et al., 1990; Brauner & Stephens, 2006; Buka et al., 2002; Costello et al., 2005; Du”
• School-based depression and anxiety prevention programs for young people: A systematic review and meta-analysis. (2017, background): “…depression programs would be best delivered in childhood or early adolescence, as the mean age of onset for depression is between 11 and 14 years (Merikangas et al., 2009), while for anxiety disorders, delivery during childhood would be best given the early age of onset of many anxiety disorders…”
• Mental disorders among college students in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys (2016, neutral): “Although prevalence (Costello et al., 2005; Merikangas et al., 2009) and treatment (Fazel et al.”