Most people’s mental health conditions morph into others over time

By Dan Jones

Agefotostock, Alamy

Diagnoses of psychiatric conditions can guide a person’s treatment and are useful for mental health research. But a study that followed more than 1000 people for four decades suggests that psychiatry’s over-reliance on specific diagnoses may be misguided, and that many conditions change and overlap with one another over time.

The research, led by Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt of Duke University, North Carolina, drew on the Dunedin Birth Cohort Study, which follows a nationally representative group of more than 1000 New Zealanders born in 1972 …