[30 years later: children attending a counseling service up to 3 years of age]

Area of Science:

• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Developmental Psychology
• Public Health

Context:

• Longitudinal study of individuals (0-18 years) discharged from Stockholm Child Guidance Clinics between 1953-1955.
• Focus on a subgroup of 125 patients under 3 years old.
• Follow-up conducted 30 years later using psychiatric records and official registers.

Purpose:

• To assess the long-term outcomes of early childhood mental health evaluations.
• To determine the prognostic value of initial assessments conducted in the 1950s.
• To identify gender-specific developmental trajectories and prognostic factors.

Summary:

• Initial evaluations judged most young patients as mentally healthy or having mild environmental reactions.
• Despite initial assessments, 60% of the under-3 cohort were identified in problematic behavior registers 30 years later.
• Boys primarily exhibited social maladjustment, while girls more frequently sought psychiatric care.

Impact:

• Demonstrates that early childhood mental health evaluations may lack long-term predictive accuracy.
• Highlights significant gender differences in long-term outcomes (social maladjustment vs. psychiatric care).
• Identifies gender and parental psychiatric diagnosis as key prognostic factors in the 1950s.