Personalized treatment strategies for young people with mental illness

Mental health problems have increased sharply among children and adolescents over the past two decades, including conditions such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression.

The growing demand for care exceeds the current capacity of child and adolescent psychiatric services, leading to long waiting lists and insufficient support. This has created a need for more effective and individualized treatments.

The aim of this project is to identify new risk factors for youth mental health problems and psychiatric disorders, support better stratification of patients within child and adolescent psychiatry, and promote personalized treatments.

By tailoring interventions to each young person’s needs, the researchers hope to improve treatment outcomes and reduce the burden on families, as well as by extension, the healthcare services and society.

Professor Henrik Hegbo Larsson uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines methods from epidemiology, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, and psychology. They will analyze previously underutilized data and apply advanced statistical models, such as network meta-analysis (NMA) and machine learning, to better understand what contributes to mental health difficulties and how treatments can be made more precise and effective.