Citation

Donnelly M. Int. J. Law Psychiatry 2019; 66: e101461.

Affiliation

Law School, University College Cork, Ireland. Electronic address: m.donnelly@ucc.ie.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijlp.2019.101461

PMID

31706383

Abstract

Given that adolescence is a time of profound psychological dis- ruption (Blakemore, 2008; Blakemore & Robbins, 2012), it is no sur- prise that it is also a time when mental health difficulties emerge or increase (Patton et al., 2016). The World Health Organisation (‘WHO') estimates2that 10–20% of adolescents worldwide experience ‘mental disorders' in any given year (WHO, 2018a, 2018b), with the median age for onset being 14 years for anxiety and 11 years for personality disorder (OECD, 2014). In Ireland, prevalence figures are higher. A UNICEF Report found that 22.6% of adolescents (aged 15–19 years) reported two or more mental health symptoms more than once a week (UNICEF, 2017) while a National Study of 6085 12–19 year olds found that 22% had mild/moderate depression and 8% had severe/very se- vere depression (Dooley & Fitzgerald, 2012: 25). The more wide-ran- ging (although smaller sample size3) PERL study found that 15.4% of Irish 10–13 year olds were experiencing a mental disorder at the time interviewed and that 31.2% had experienced a mental disorder at some point in their lives; of young adults aged 19–24 years, 19.5% were ex- periencing a mental disorder at the time interviewed and 56% had experienced a mental disorder at some point in their lives (Cannon et al., 2013).


Where prevalence studies include a gender breakdown, it clearly emerges that adolescent mental health difficulties are experienced in a gendered way. It would seem that broadly similar numbers of adoles- cent boys and girls experience mental health difficulties (Dooley & Fitzgerald, 2012; NHS, 2018, although compare Lawrence et al., 2015). However, there are differences in the kinds of difficulties reported (Dooley & Fitzgerald, 2012; Lawrence et al., 2015; NHS, 2018). Re- flecting similar patterns in the adult population (Pigott, 1999; Kuehner, 2003; WHO, 2004; Seedat et al., 2009), prevalence studies suggest that adolescent girls are more likely to experience depression and eating disorders and that adolescent boys are more likely to experience schi- zophrenia, personality disorders and drug related mental illness ...

Language: en