A Six-Year Follow-up Study of 65 Adolescent Patients

Abstract

PATIENTS with depressions or manias comprised two fifths (26 patients) of a group of 65 patients, age 19 or younger, consecutively admitted to a short-term treatment psychiatric hospital and were located and interviewed, systematically, six years later.¹ Because disorder of affect was the largest single diagnostic category in these young patients, study of the clinical course and sociologic attributes of the group might well be relevant to recognition and treatment of a substantial number of people who develop psychiatric illness at this crucial stage of life. This paper examines such data for the 26 affect-disorder patients and compares them with 25 patients with other psychiatric diagnoses. Method From July 1, 1959, through June 30, 1960, 65 patients age 19 or younger were admitted to Renard Hospital, a short-term treatment psychiatric hospital in the Washington University—Barnes Hospital Medical Center, St. Louis. They accounted for 5.7%