Secondly, this study provides disorder-specific estimates of age at disorder onset that impacts mental health service configuration and delivery. For about half of mental disorders (Table 2), disorder onset occurs well before age 18. Disorder median age at onset occurred during the neurodevelopment, within age 14 for the vast majority of phobias and separation anxiety, ASD, ADHD, and for more then half in social anxiety disorders. For these disorders, good mental health promotion, along with preventive and early intervention approaches need to target these neurodevelopmental periods, mainly during pre-school and primary school periods. Many of the risk and protective factors that impact the neurodevelopment of individuals with these disorders are known [23, 47–52], and some of them may even impact the pre or perinatal phases [53]. A recent meta-umbrella review (i.e., a synthesis of systematic reviews of meta-analyses) has summarised risk and protective factors (beyond genetics) in a comprehensive atlas [54]. Importantly, targeting the neurodevelopmental phase has the potential to accommodate multi-endpoint numerators across mental disorders that are essential to better justify the denominator of efforts and costs for preventive
