Long-term follow-up of early detected vulnerable children

Made an 11-13 yr follow-up of the subsequent psychiatric histories of over 1,000 children who did or did not participate in a county-wide preventively oriented school mental health program for 1st and 3rd graders between 1958-1961. Clinical "risk" or "vulnerability" judgments were available for program Ss, and reasonably comprehensive 3rd-grade test data were available for all Ss. Early-detected vulnerable Ss were found to have disproportionately high later appearances in a community-wide psychiatric register. Retrospective analyses of the 3rd-grade test data indicate that peer judgment was by far the most sensitive predictor of later psychiatric difficulty. (29 ref)