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Eight-year incidence of psychiatric disorders and service use from adolescence to early adulthood: longitudinal follow-up of the Mexican Adolescent Mental Health Survey

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Abstract

Half of mental disorders have their first onset before adulthood when the presence of a disorder may be particularly disruptive to developmental milestones. Retrospective prevalence estimates have been shown to underestimate the burden of mental illness and scarce data are available on the incidence of disorders throughout the adolescent period, especially in developing countries. Thus, the objective was to determine the incidence of mental disorders in an 8-year period from adolescence to young adulthood, onset of service use and their predictors in a Mexican cohort. 1071 respondents from a representative two-wave panel sample participated in the Mexican Adolescent Mental Health Survey in 2005 and in the follow-up survey in 2013. Disorders were evaluated with the World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview. 37.9 % experienced the onset of a psychiatric disorder and 28.4 % sought services for the first time. Substance use disorders had the greatest incidence, followed by mood and behavior disorders, anxiety disorders and lastly eating disorders. Sex, age, school dropout, childhood adversities and prior mental disorders predicted the onset of new disorders. Being female, having more educated parents and most classes of disorder predicted first time service use. These findings contribute to a paradigm shift in conceptions of mental disorder similar to how we think of common physical afflictions as near universal experiences across the life course, but less frequent at any given moment. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable. Therefore, public health policy should focus on early universal promotion of positive mental health and structural determinants of mental health.

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Acknowledgments

Wave I of the Mexican Adolescent Mental Health Survey was supported by the National Council on Science and Technology and Ministry of Education (Grant CONACYT-SEP-SSEDF-2003-CO1-22). Wave II was supported by the National Council on Science and Technology (Grant CB-2010-01-155221) with supplementary support from Fundación Azteca. The survey was carried out in conjunction with the World Health Organization World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative. We thank the WMH staff for assistance with instrumentation, fieldwork, and data analysis.

Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standards

This study was approved by the ethics committee of the National Institute of Psychiatry Ramón de la Fuente and therefore has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. At wave I, all participants were minors and thus gave their assent while their parents or legal guardians gave informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study. At wave II, all participants gave their informed consent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente, Calzada México-Xochimilco 101, San Lorenzo Huipulco, Mexico, DF, 14370, Mexico

    Corina Benjet, Guilherme Borges, Enrique Méndez, Yesica Albor, Leticia Casanova, Ricardo Orozco, Teresa Curiel, Clara Fleiz & María Elena Medina-Mora

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  1. Corina Benjet
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  2. Guilherme Borges
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  7. Teresa Curiel
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  8. Clara Fleiz
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  9. María Elena Medina-Mora
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Correspondence to Corina Benjet.

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Benjet, C., Borges, G., Méndez, E. et al. Eight-year incidence of psychiatric disorders and service use from adolescence to early adulthood: longitudinal follow-up of the Mexican Adolescent Mental Health Survey. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 25, 163–173 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-015-0721-5

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