A 30-year follow-up study of a child psychiatric clientele. II. Psychiatric morbidity

Psychiatric morbidity, expressed as hospital admissions during a 30-year follow-up period, was studied among 322 former child psychiatric patients, who were admitted from 1949-1951, and who were followed up as of December 31, 1980. A total of 115 patients (36%)--55 boys (29%) and 60 girls (45%)--had been admitted to an adult psychiatric department, with 50 patients having only one admission. The mean age at the time of the study was 39 years. The former child psychiatric patients were admitted to adult psychiatric hospitals 50 times more often than comparable age groups from the general population. At all times women had a higher prevalence of admission. The cumulative percentage of first admissions of men was almost unchanged during the last 10 years of the follow-up period, and the figure for women was gradually increasing. The longitudinal course of mental disorders in the sample, measured as psychiatric admissions, was studied in relation to age at the time of admission to the child psychiatric department. The results consistently showed that older age of admission as a child meant fewer psychiatric admissions as an adult during the follow-up period. A total of 39 of the psychiatrically admitted patients (34%) had been granted a disability pension. A total of 7 patients (6%) died during the study period, including 2 patients who committed suicide. By the variables employed, 37% of the sample were judged to have had a good overall outcome, with diagnosis being an inconsistent predictor of outcome.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)