2009/03/31 by Kathleen R. Merikangas, Erin F. Nakamura, Ronald C. Kessler · 1,280 citations
Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · #Adolescent and Pediatric Healthcare #Anxiety #Bipolar Disorder and Treatment #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Classification of mental disorders #Clinical psychology #Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood #Epidemiology #Medicine #Mental health #Mood #Mood disorders #Prevalence of mental disorders #Psychiatric epidemiology #Psychiatry #Psychology
paper · doi:10.31887/dcns.2009.11.1/krmerikangas
published in Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 11(1), 7-20 (Laboratoires Servier)
openalex publication_date 2009/03/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
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.