Behaviour link to lifelong health

People who behaved badly at school are more likely to suffer mental health and social difficulties as adults, a 40-year-study of Britons suggests.

Canadian researchers writing in the British Medical Journal examined data from 3,500 people from the age of 13 until they reached their 40s or 50s.

Those who had school behaviour problems were more likely to be depressed, divorced or have financial problems.

But a psychologist questioned whether the same would apply in other eras.

In the late 1950s and the start of the 1960s, teachers across Britain were asked to rate the behaviour of a nationally representative sample of children, all of them born in 1946, as they entered their early teenage years.

A quarter of the children were described by the teachers as having some sort of mild or more severe behavioural problem.

The participants were then reinterviewed between the ages of 36 and 53, asked about their mental health, and social and economic status.


Credits: BBC