[Prognostic indicators of psychogenic diseases in adulthood based on childhood variables]

Using the data of the Mannheim Cohort Projekt (Schepank, 1987, 1990), the authors investigate possible correlations between psychic symptoms in childhood, risk and protective factors with regard to psychogenic disorders in adulthood. For this, the number of symptoms and the "Impairment-Score" as the degree of psychogenic complaints were related to each other by determining Spearmen's rank correlation coefficient. Additionally, the predictive power of these three variables were investigated by means of discriminance analysis. It could be shown, that the severity of psychogenic illness in adulthood increases with the number of childhood symptoms. There was no evidence for the hypothesis of an increasing predictive power for the assembled variables (number of symptoms, risk factors, and protective factors) in comparison with the single variables. The results found are, however, comparable to the data of two prospective longitudinal studies.