Research Centre for Child Psychiatry focuses on research of the pre- and perinatal factors in the development of mental health disturbances in childhood and adulthood as well as finding keys to the development of selective interventions focused on children at risk. We aim at transferring knowledge from epidemiological risk studies into intervention studies.
Our studies have potential to lead to preventive strategies aimed at reducing the risk of major psychiatric disorders, elaborate deviations in the developmental trajectory which antedate illness onset, and potentially result in an improved understanding of pathogenic mechanisms.
The strengths of our research include the possibility to use several population-based cohort samples to test various hypotheses, large sample sizes, low attrition rates, and the possibility to use several nationwide registries at follow-up, which is a unique possibility in Nordic countries. We also participate in international multi-site research. This way we are able to overcome problems of small sample sizes and poor comparability resulting in lack of statistical power, which has been prevalent in several previous studies of psychiatric disorders.
