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# Care-experienced Scottish children had roughly triple the mental health admission risk
- URL: https://www.coios.me/care-experienced-scottish-children-had-roughly-triple-the/
- Published: 2026-09-23T13:02:06.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-23T21:35:31.000Z
- Description: Linking Scottish social care and hospital records for 663,601 children born between 1990 and 2004 and followed to 2016, care-experienced girls had a hazard ratio of 3.22 and boys 2.64 for a first mental health hospitalisation, with higher ratios still for repeat admissions.
- Author: Daniel Ryan
- Tags: Power of data, What linked data reveals, United Kingdom, #peer-reviewed, #new, #item, #source-2026-09

The CHiCS study linked routine health and social care records for 13,830 care-experienced and 649,771 general-population children in Scotland, following hospitalisations from birth to 2016\. Care experience carried a hazard ratio for a first mental health hospitalisation of 3.22 (95% CI 2.82-3.68) in girls and 2.64 (2.32-2.99) in boys, with incidence rate ratios for repeated admissions of 4.06 and 3.66\. Asthma, diabetes and epilepsy were each associated with higher rates of repeated mental health admission in both groups.

*Why it is interesting: It measures a childhood exposure that health data alone cannot see, and only because care records were joined to hospital records for a whole national birth cohort.*

Source

[Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 22 September 2026](https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.70132?ref=coios.me)

DOI

10.1111/camh.70132

Type

Peer-reviewed article

Design

Population-wide administrative data linkage cohort, 13,830 care-experienced and 649,771 general-population children in Scotland, births 1990-2004 followed to 2016; Cox and negative binomial models

Verdict

New finding

Driver

[What linked data reveals](https://www.coios.me/d-linked-data/)