23 May Unlocking the Connection Between Childhood Learning and Mental Health in Adulthood
Learning is essential to acquire new skills, knowledge, and understanding to promote personal and professional growth opportunities. Learning also helps us adapt to problems and challenges that occur in our lives. By gaining knowledge from experiences, we improve our ability to think critically and solve problems.
When disrupted by a learning disability, the consequences can be impactful and affect a large percentage of the population. According to the Learning Disabilities Association of America, about 20% of the population has some learning or attention issue approximately 66 million people. These individuals are likelier to experience numerous adverse life events than those without learning or attention issues. Risks include being three times more likely to drop out of school, lower enrollment rates in college, and nearly half of all youth with a learning disability have had some justice system involvement. A 2012 study in the School Psychology Quarterly journal reported that 24.5% of youth in elementary school with learning disabilities and 34.1% in middle school reported being bullied. This rate is one to one and a half times the national average for students without disabilities.
Youth with learning disabilities often garner increased attention and intervention around their academic deficits. However, there is less attention to the link between learning disabilities and the connection with mental health problems, both in youth and later adulthood. According to 2016, research in the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, youth with learning disabilities are about 23% more likely to develop an anxiety disorder in adulthood. Fears of underperforming compared to peers can become overwhelming. This anxiety, coupled with increased rates of bullying, can have a lifelong impact, resulting in poorer vocational accomplishments. In 2021, The National Center for Learning Disabilities reported that individuals with learning disabilities attend a four-year collegiate program at half the rate of their peers. In addition, only 17.9% of people with a disability were employed, compared to 61.8% of people without a disability.
Rates of depression in adults with a childhood learning disability are also more prevalent than in individuals without a learning disability. A 2018 study in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment by the Cambridge University Press cited research that identifies the prevalence of depression in people with learning disabilities as around 3 to 4%. This prevalence is a 1.7% higher rate than the diagnosis of depression found in the general population. Higher rates of suicide are also more prevalent for those with a learning disability. A 2017 Canadian study found that adults with a learning disability were 46% more likely to attempt suicide than those without learning disorders.
Given this statistical evidence, it is not difficult to see why children with learning disabilities are at greater risk for developing psychological difficulties. The correlation between learning difficulties in childhood and serious mental health symptoms and rates of suicide in adulthood is a call to action for school mental health providers and administrators. It is critical to screen children early for learning disabilities and offer early intervention.