Mental disorders such as major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are the leading cause of disability in young people worldwide, according to a new study on the global burden of disease in youth published in The Lancet today.
The international study, which is the first to provide a comprehensive picture of the global causes of disability in adolescence and the main risk factors for disease in later life, found that mental disorders represent 45 per cent of the disease burden among young people aged 10-24 years.
Researchers from the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute (Professor George Patton, Professor Susan Sawyer and Ms Carolyn Coffey) joined an international research team from the World Health Organization to analyse data from WHO’s 2004 Global Burden of Disease Study. It showed the three main causes of disability worldwide for both sexes were neuropsychiatric disorders including major depression, alcohol use, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder (45%), unintentional injuries (mainly road traffic accidents (12%), and infectious and parasitic diseases (10%).
The study found the main global risk factors for future disability in all age groups (0–80 years) are being underweight, unsafe sex, alcohol use, unclean water, poor sanitation and hygiene. In contrast, the main health risks emerging during adolescence were alcohol use, unsafe sex, iron deficiency, and lack of contraception, with the rates of alcohol use and unsafe sex rising sharply in late adolescence and early adulthood.
The burden of disease increased steadily from early to late adolescence and then to early adulthood. Overall, rates were equal between sexes, except for the 15–19 year olds, when disease burden was slightly higher in young women than in young men. After the age of 25 years, rates were noticeably higher for men than for women and remained so into old age.
Professor George Patton said the health of young people has been largely neglected in global public health because the adolescent age group is perceived as healthy.
“Opportunities for prevention of disease and injury in this age group are not fully exploited. Prevention strategies need to recognize not only the burden of disease in 10-to-24-year-olds but the major influence of their emerging lifestyle on their health in later life.”
“In high income countries like Australia, the burden of disease is driven by conditions causing disability, rather than death. Although the lifestyles that young people adopt might not have an immediate effect on their health, they have a substantial effect in later life. Interventions to address health risk behaviours and unhealthy lifestyles are likely to be more effective in these years than in adulthood when patterns are established.”
Gore F, Bloem PN, Patton GC, Ferguson J, Joseph V, Coffey C, Sawyer SM, Mathers CD. Global burden of disease in young people aged 10—24 years: a systematic analysis. The Lancet 2011; 7 June doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60512-6.
The full Gore et al Lancet Publication June 2011 can be found here.
An accompanying comment in The Lancet by Prof John Santelli from the USA can also be read here