Abnormalities of growth in 7- to 18-year-old psychiatric patients

The growth curves of all nonimmigrant school-age children living in one district of Malmö, Sweden and treated at the Department of Child and Youth Psychiatry during 1983 were investigated. The study group consisted of 40 children. Twenty-five of these children (63%) showed abnormal growth compared to 6 children (15%) with abnormal growth in an age-and sex-matched nonpsychiatric control population (p less than 0.001). A majority of the children with abnormal growth exhibited deviant growth within the first 4 years of life, usually several years before showing any psychiatric symptoms. These results, if borne out by additional studies, may have important clinical applications in the fields of developmental medicine and child psychiatry.