Injury risk in young psychiatric outpatients: an 11-year follow-up of 302 adolescents

The relationship between cognitive ability and depression: a longitudinal data analysis

PURPOSE

There is literature indicating cognitive ability and depression are related, but few studies have examined the direction of the relationship. This study examined the relationship between depression levels and cognitive abilities from adolescence to early adulthood.

METHODS

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 14,322), this study used path modeling to investigate the relationship between depression and cognitive ability at baseline and again 8 years later.

RESULTS

After controlling for initial levels of depression, cognitive ability, and other covariates, depressive symptoms in adolescence are related to cognitive ability in early adulthood, but adolescent cognitive ability is not related to adult depression levels. Moreover, after controlling for adolescent levels of depression and cognitive ability, the cognitive ability-depression relationship disappears in adulthood.

CONCLUSIONS

The cognitive ability-depression relationship appears early in life, and it is likely that the presence of depressive symptoms leads to lower cognitive ability. Thus, intervening at early signs of depression not only can help alleviate depression, but will likely have an effect of cognitive ability as well.

Severe injuries in adolescence predict psychosis: a nested case control study of the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort

Adolescents who later develop schizophrenia are likely to have problems with motor coordination and many adolescents with schizophrenia have self-injurious behaviour before treatment of first psychosis but association between injuries in adolescence and onset of psychotic disorder is unknown. The aim of this study was to describe what type of injuries psychotic individuals had during adolescence and in which age these injuries occurred. The study population consists of 155 members of the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort with diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disease and 620 matched controls. All injuries which had occurred before onset of psychosis were extracted from Finnish Hospital Discharge Register. Individuals with psychotic disorder were more likely to have a history of severe injury. During the age 12-19, 11% of psychotic subjects and 5.3% of healthy controls had an injury (z=2.38; P=0.017) and the most common type of injury was fractures. Our findings suggest that severe injury in adolescence may be a predictor of psychosis.