The study is headed up by doctors Joaquim Raduà, head of the IDIBAPS research group Imaging of mood- and anxiety-related disorders, Marco Solmi, from the University of Padua, and Paolo Fusar-Poli, of King’s College London.
Prevention at age of onset of the disorder
Mental disorders are one of the main causes of disability. Various studies indicate that good prevention would enable their appearance to be reduced. “If we were capable of detecting in time any change that advises of a possible mental disorder, perhaps we could correct it and ensure that the brain matures in a healthy way, preventing the disorder from appearing”, explains Raduà.
Despite this, “to ensure that a prevention programme is effective, it needs to be conducted at the specific age of onset for each mental disorder. To date, the age of onset of the different disorders was not a well-known subject, because investigating it is more complex than it may seem”.
The team of researchers combined, for the first time, all the information on the age of onset of mental disorders from the epidemiological studies published to date. Thus, a sample of over 700,000 people from all five continents was built up. Raduà adds that “the analyses were not easy, because each disorder follows an atypical and unique pattern, therefore we had to create new algorithms for meta-analysis and the computers spent weeks, or even months, performing the calculations”.
Age of onset follows a continuum
One result of the study is that the age of onset for most mental disorders is 14 years, a time at which the brain is experiencing important maturational changes.
Furthermore, the study concludes that the majority of mental disorders appear uninterruptedly during the first 25 years of life. “We cannot divide the disorders between some that occur in childhood and others that appear in adulthood”.
This questions the current division of mental health between schemes for people aged under 18 years and schemes for those aged over 18, “because for many people, attention becomes more fragmented when they reach the majority of age. Therefore, we ask if it would not be better to adapt the mental health schemes to the different ages of onset of the different disorders. We know that age of onset is not the only factor to be taken into account, but this study puts the question on the table.”
Age of onset of the main mental disorders
|
Disorder |
Average age of disorder onset (50% of cases appear before this age) |
25% of cases appear before the age of... |
25% of cases appear after the age of... |
|
Phobia / Separation anxiety |
8 years |
5 years |
17 years |
|
Autism spectrum disorder |
9 |
5 |
14 |
|
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder |
12 |
8 |
18 |
|
Social anxiety |
13 |
9 |
17 |
|
Anorexia nervosa |
17 |
14 |
22 |
|
Bulimia nervosa |
18 |
15 |
22 |
|
Obsessive-compulsive disorder |
19 |
14 |
29 |
|
Binge eating disorder |
20 |
16 |
25 |
|
Disorder associated with cannabis consumption |
22 |
19 |
29 |
|
Schizophrenia |
25 |
21 |
35 |
|
Panic disorder |
26 |
18 |
36 |
|
Alcohol abuse disorder |
27 |
19 |
44 |
|
Depression |
30 |
21 |
44 |
|
Posttraumatic stress disorder |
30 |
17 |
48 |
|
Generalised anxiety disorder |
32 |
20 |
42 |
|
Bipolar disorder |
33 |
22 |
49 |
|
Acute and transitory psychoses |
35 |
27 |
45 |
Article reference
Age at onset of mental disorders worldwide: large-scale meta-analysis of 192 epidemiological studies
Marco Solmi, Joaquim Radua, Miriam Olivola, Enrico Croce, Livia Soardo, Gonzalo Salazar de Pablo, Jae Il Shin, James B. Kirkbride, Peter Jones, Jae Han Kim, Jong Yeob Kim, Andrè F. Carvalho, Mary V. Seeman, Christoph U. Correll & Paolo Fusar-Poli. Mol Psychiatry (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-021-01161-7
