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.