Published 2009
This report, in association with Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and Unison, finds that children and adolescents with conduct and emotional problems have relatively worse prospects throughout their adult life. It is based on new findings from three national studies of the lives of people born in 1946, 1958 and 1970. It shows that mental health problems in children and teenagers have a significant impact on their chances of success in employment and family life as well as contact with the criminal justice system. People with conduct problems in adolescence were at double the risk of leaving school with no qualifications. They were more likely to be out of work or low paid, to become teenage parents and to be divorced later in life. And those with severe conduct problems were four times more likely than average to have been arrested by the police by the age of 30. Emotional problems also have a major impact. Girls with severe emotional problems were three times more likely to experience mental ill health as adults. But emotional problems slightly reduced the chances of contact with the police and had little effect on chances in employment. Paul Hackett, director of the Smith Institute, said: “This important study of real lives over time provides further evidence of the need for politicians, from all parties, to think longer term about the way public policies are shaped to tackle mental ill health in our society. The research shows that there are significant benefits from an ‘early interventionist’ approach, and that failure to tackle childhood mental health problems has a disproportionate impact on a person adult life chances.”