Risk and protective factors for the development of mental disorders

Project description

Biological, psychological, and social risk- and protective factors interact during childhood and in the development of child psychiatric symptoms. These risk and protective factors are studied in both epidemiological and clinical studies. In the project Cross-cultural and longitudinal studies of mental illness, the consequences of being affected by child psychiatric symptoms in children and adolescents are studied. Risk groups that are studied include traumatized children and children living in psychosocially vulnerable environments and children with neuropsychiatric disabilities, who are followed longitudinally. In another international collaboration, we study mental illness and trauma in street children in Duhok, a city in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Difficulty sleeping is a factor that can contribute to the risk of developing but also worsening psychiatric symptoms in children and adolescents. In an ongoing project, we are studying whether sleep difficulties are related to later psychiatric symptoms and whether psychological treatment of the sleep difficulties can lead to reduced psychiatric symptom burden.

Another risk or protective factor may be the individual's ability to regulate emotions. This risk factor is studied in several of the research group's projects, among other things in relation to eating disorders, ADHD, personality disorders and as a transdiagnostic risk factor, as well as its relation to functioning in everyday life.