When it comes to adults' mental health, their early education and nutrition may have more impact than experts previously thought.
Preschool programs that provide exercise, enriched instruction and hot meals with fish or meat may stave off mental illness and crime patterns that might otherwise occur in early adulthood, a study led by a University of Southern California psychology professor concludes.
"We believe the seeds of crime are sown early in life," said Adrian Raine, who with four other researchers describes the results in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry. "To prevent crime, we have to start much earlier in life."
The study took place over three decades and tracked the behavior of students in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. It is one of the few studies designed to determine whether early childhood intervention can pay off in mental health benefits in early adulthood, when conditions such as schizophrenia and its precursor (known as schizotypal or antisocial behavior) tend to occur.
Raine cautioned, however, that there does appear to be a strong genetic component to schizophrenia that shouldn't be discounted. "Pushing biology and genetic issues under the carpet isn't going to help society in the long run," he said. The good nutrition and educational programs early in life might at least delay the onset of mental illness in some people, he added.
The study began in 1972 with funding from the World Health Organization, which was trying to improve conditions for children in developing countries. Peter Venables, a professor of psychology at the University of York in England (who was Raine's doctoral thesis supervisor) and Sarnoff A. Mednick, director of the Social Science Research Institute at USC, decided to combine it with research assessing the early roots of schizophrenia and whether it might be preventable, Mednick said.
Raine came aboard in 1987 and received funding in 1990 from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Ministry of Health in Mauritius to continue the project.
The island nation was chosen as the locale for the study because the WHO wanted it to take place in a developing country, where it was easy to track the lives and progress of the students. Few Mauritians ever leave the country.
Other childhood intervention programs, such as Head Start in the United States, have shown academic benefits, although Raine said they "tend to wash out" a few years later. "What's interesting, is [this study shows] that there are behavioral differences that are sustained in the long term," Raine said.
