Mysteriet med de överrepresenterade decemberbarnen: En kvantitativ studie om sent födda barns överrepresentation inom neuropsykiatriska funktionsnedsättningar

Sammanfattning: Children that are born later in the year are, based on previous studies, more likely to be diagnosed with a neuropsychiatric disorder (hereby NPD), which is a bit surprising considering that NPDs are considered to be primarily genetic disorders. The aim of our study is to test the hypothesis that there is a correlation between being born later in the year and an increased prevalence of referrals from school because of suspicion of NPD. We did this by looking at the connections between what time of the year children are born and the probability of being referred to psychiatric assessment due to suspicion of a neuropsychiatric disorder. The method we chose for our study was a quantitative survey sent out to school psychologists in the different municipalities in the region of Skåne, Sweden. The psychologists were asked to contribute with the birth month of the ten most recent children that had been referred to psychiatric assessment due to suspicion of NPD, as well as the specific diagnosis suspected. Our findings were not quite expected, considering the overrepresentation of children born late in the year among children diagnosed with NPD. On the one hand, we could see what we were looking for in our analysis because the number of children being referred actually increased somewhat throughout the year in a correlation analysis. But, on the other hand, the correlation was not as clear nor as strong as expected, and more interestingly, the last quarter of the year was the quarter with the least number of referred children, while we expected the opposite. Instead, it was the third quarter that contributed to the increase of referrals throughout the year in our analysis. In our discussion, we consider different factors that can affect this result. Factors such as regional differences in diagnostic guidelines and praxis or the fact that we only studied children referred to psychiatry from their school when there are numerous other ways for an investigation to be initiated. Or maybe the overrepresentation occurs in the diagnostic stage for some reason, rather than the referral stage.