For twenty years, researchers in Melbourne walked alongside children born at the edge of viability, watching them grow into adulthood alongside peers born at full term. What they found reframes a long-standing assumption: that very premature birth casts a permanent shadow over mental health. Instead, the study reveals that anxiety and mood disorders rise along strikingly similar arcs in both groups — and that the most powerful predictor of emotional difficulty is not the timing of birth, but the social world a child is born into.
Very Preterm Birth Shows Similar Mental Health Trajectory to Term Birth Through Adulthood
Mental health disorders affect approximately 10-20% of children and adolescents, with anxiety and mood disorders impacting developmental outcomes across childhood into adulthood for vulnerable populations.