Cited by 235Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentMental Health Treatment and AccessHealth and Medical Studies

Mental health and well-being from childhood to adulthood: design, methods and results of the 11-year follow-up of the BELLA study

Open access
Otto, Christiane, Reiss, Franziska, Voss, Catharina, Wüstner, Anne, Meyrose, Ann-Katrin, Hölling, Heike, Ravens-Sieberer, Ulrike·2021·European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Abstract

Mental health and well-being are of great interest in health policy and research. Longitudinal surveys are needed to provide solid population-based data. We describe the design and methods of an 11-year follow-up of the German BELLA study in children, adolescents and young adults, and we report on age- and gender-specific courses of general health and well-being, long-term health-related outcomes of mental health problems, and mental health care use. The BELLA study is the module on mental health and well-being within the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS). Standardised measures were used at each of the five measurement points of the BELLA study. In the 11-year follow-up, young people aged 7–31 years participated ( n = 3492). Individual growth modelling, linear regression and descriptive analyses were conducted. Self-reported general health and well-being were both better in younger (vs. older) and in male (vs. female) participants according to the data from all five measurement points. Mental health problems in childhood and adolescence (measured at baseline) predicted impaired health outcomes at 6-year and 11-year follow-ups. Approximately one out of four children with a diagnosed mental disorder was not undergoing mental health treatment. With its 11-year follow-up, the prospective longitudinal BELLA study provides new and solid data on mental health and well-being from childhood to adulthood in Germany, and these data are important for health promotion and prevention practices. These results are consistent with previous findings. Promising future analyses are planned.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s00787-020-01630-4

Cites

94 of 94 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • For a small proportion of children, early behavioral difficulties persist and represent the start of a pathway to mental health challenges.

    “While such difficulties usually resolve naturally across the transition into the pre-school years [86], for a small proportion of children, difficulties persist and represent the start of a pathway to mental health challenges [4, 11, 15, 16, 24, 44, 71].”

    From Optimizing parenting and child outcomes following parent–child interaction therapy – toddler: a randomized controlled trial (2024) · cites this paper as [71]

    The Discussion reports that about 31% of participants with mental health problems at baseline had corresponding problems six years later, and that childhood or adolescent symptoms predicted later mental health. It does not establish that behavioral difficulties beginning before preschool persist in a small proportion of children; its findings concern mental health problems in children and adolescents more broadly. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [71]Freire T Ferreira G Health-related quality of life of adolescents: Relations with positive and negative psychological dimensions Int J Adolesc Youth 2018 23 1 11 24 10.1080/02673843.2016.1262268 · DOI

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Otto, C., Reiss, F., Voss, C., Wüstner, A., Meyrose, A.-K., Hölling, H., & Ravens-Sieberer, U.
Affiliations
  • University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (DE)
  • Helmut Schmidt University (DE)
  • Robert Koch Institute (DE)
Venue
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Published
2020-09-12
Volume
30
Issue
10
Pages
1559-1577
ISSN
  • 1018-8827 (ISSN-L)
  • 1435-165X
OpenAlex
W3086032504
Cited by
235
References
94
Citations by year
2026: 31 · 2025: 64 · 2024: 54 · 2023: 45 · 2022: 30 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 1
FWCI
8.51
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Publication server of the Robert Koch Institute (Robert Kock Institute) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
Robert Koch Institut
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health and Medical Studies
Keywords
mental health, well-being, longitudinal follow-up, child psychopathology, adolescents, young adults, health status, gender differences, age differences, mental health service utilization, health promotion, prevention, KiGGS
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Mental Disorders, Child, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Germany, Health Surveys, Humans, Male, Mental Health, Prospective Studies, Young Adult

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review