Chronic mental illness in adolescence: a global overview

In countries where it has been studied, between 10 and 15% of adolescents appear to have an emotional disorder, and an additional 5-10% have significant emotional symptomatology. Despite this prevalence, pediatricians appear poorly trained to identify children with emotional and behavioral problems. This paper focuses on schizophrenia, affective and chronic stress disorders. Schizophrenia in adolescence has a reported prevalence ranging from 0.9/10,000 hospital admissions for adolescents in Great Britain to 0.4% of cases in a university setting in the United States. For affective disorders, studies have placed the prevalence rates at nearly 3% for boys and almost double that for girls. A much larger percent of adolescents have significant depressive symptomatology. Many youths grow up in chronically stressful environments. This paper reviews the prevalence as well as the major diagnostic and prognostic issues, for the leading chronic mental health disorders of youth.