The prospective design of many of the community surveys of children and adolescents that began in the 1970s and 1980s has generated substantial information on the continuity of childhood disorders into early adulthood. The cumulative lifetime prevalence of mental disorders derived from these long-term follow-up studies17,19-21,101 tend to be even greater than the retrospective estimates of lifetime prevalence reported in adult, psychiatric epidemiology.2,102
