Mental illness in early life linked to worse health and advanced age as an adult

A new pair of studies from the long-term work of Duke’s research team in New Zealand argue that mental health stress can lead to worse physical health and aging into adulthood.

But because mental health problems occur early in life and are identifiable, the researchers say more investment in rapid mental health care could be used to prevent later disease and lower social health care costs.

The same people who have psychiatric disorders at a young age go on to experience too many age-related physical diseases and neurodegenerative diseases as they are older adults. “

Terrie Moffitt, Lead Author, Nannerl O. Keohane Professor of Psychology and Non-Psychology, Duke University

The findings in a paper appear Feb. 17 in JAMA Psychology comes from the long – term Dunedin Study, which has tested and monitored the health and well – being of thousands of New Zealand born in 1972 and ’73 since birth to the age of 45.

In middle age, study participants with a history of childhood psychopathology were accelerating, there was a decrease in sensory, motor, and mental functions, and they were perceived as looking older than their peers. This pattern was maintained even after the data were previously controlled for health factors such as obesity, smoking, medications and physical disease. Their young mental health issues included anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, but also schizophrenia.

“You can identify those at risk for physical illnesses much earlier in their lives,” said Jasmin Wertz, a Duke’s graduate researcher who led the study. “If you can improve mental health in childhood and adolescence, it is possible that you could intervene to improve their physical health and age.”

A related study by the same team that came in Open JAMA Network in January they took a different approach and looked at 30 years of hospital records for 2.3 million New Zealanders aged 10 to 60 from 1988 to 2018. It also found a strong link between early life mental health studies and medical conditions and neurological later on.

That analysis, led by Duke Duke Lemond Richmond-Rakerd, a postdoctoral researcher, showed that young people with mental health problems were more likely to develop physical diseases and die earlier than people without mental health problems. People with mental illness received more hospitals for physical illnesses, spent more time in hospitals and accumulated more health care costs over the next 30 years.

“Our health care system often divides treatment between the brain and the body, but combining the two could be beneficial to the health of the population,” said Richmond-Rakerd, who is now professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

“Investing more resources in treating young people’s mental health problems is a window of opportunity to prevent future physical illnesses in older adults,” Moffitt said. mental health going on to become very costly medical patients later in life. “

In the 2019 statement for JAMA Psychology, Moffitt and her research partner Avshalom Caspi, professor of psychology and neuro-science at Edward M. Arnett argued that mental health providers have a chance to detect health problems and other social costs by getting involved the lives of younger people.

Their body of work shows that mental health problems can be reliably predicted from childhood risk factors such as poverty, maltreatment, low IQ, poor self-discipline and family mental health issues. And as numbers of people in the developed world gain more control from the elderly, now is the time to implement those investments, they said.