The same people who experience psychiatric conditions when they are young go on to experience excess age-related physical diseases and neurodegenerative diseases when they are older adults. Young people with mental health problems go on to become very costly patients in later life. Treating young people’s mental-health problems is a window-of-opportunity to prevent future physical diseases in older adults. This makes mental health care a key weapon in the fight to reduce the societal burden of age-related diseases.
Richmond-Rakerd, Leah S., Stephanie D’Souza, Barry J. Milne, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt (2021). Mental disorder forecasts physical disease and mortality: 30-year analysis of 2.3 million New Zealanders, JAMA-NetworkOpen.
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