Epidemiology and genetics of mental disorders in children and adolescents

We aim to advance knowledge on the epidemiological architecture of mental disorders in children and adolescents. We rely mainly on longitudinal data from the nationwide registers in Denmark. First, there is a global mental health crisis in youths. Psychiatric disorders are being diagnosed at an earlier age now, compared to 10-20 years ago, and there has been a large increase in number of new referrals of youths to the mental health services. We investigate and quantify the temporal changes in the occurrence of psychiatric diagnoses in youths over a 35-year period, and describe the patterns of this influx of referrals across age-groups, gender, and diagnostic categories. Second, we focus on causes and consequences of mental disorders in children and adolescents, and identify environmental and genetics risk factors, familial co-aggregation of somatic and mental disorders, and identify predictors of long-term health and socioeconomic outcomes. Third, we perform largescale pharmaco-epidemiological studies in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders.