The most severe mental disorders start at a young age, said the host of the YouTube channel “Dr Gilev’s Psychiatry Video Blog”, psychiatrist Artem Gilev. He named the most dangerous age for mental health in a conversation with “Komsomolskaya Pravda”.
According to him, up to the age of 30, a person can manifest schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder (BAD). “There are practically no people over 40 who would be diagnosed with schizophrenia for the first time. In the 50s and 60s, not even close. So the peak of detection of the most serious mental illnesses is really at 16-17 or 25-30 years of age,” he clarified. The doctor added that this is explained by genetics and peculiarities of the mechanism of development of such diseases.
At an older age, he continued, there is a higher risk of neurodegenerative diseases – Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, vascular dementia. “But resistance to nervous, anxiety disorders depends largely on how many stresses a person has suffered. The more he has experienced them up to the current moment, the worse the prognosis. Alas, no habituation, adaptation is impossible,” Gilev pointed out.
