Moffitt, a clinical psychologist known internationally for her research on human development, gave the 2022 Marjorie Pay Hinckley Lecture at BYU on Thursday.

Her presentation, entitled “Surprises About Mental Health Revealed by Following 1,000 People for Decades,” summarized some of her findings from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, and illustrated the effects of mental illness on 1,000 babies, all born in 1972 in New Zealand, throughout their lives.

Mental health assessments were performed on the 1,000 babies repeatedly throughout their lives, and now that those babies have reached middle age, the Dunedin study has produced interesting results.

Surprisingly, Moffitt’s research revealed that mental disorders affected virtually all of the babies at some point throughout their lives and that those who had an earlier onset of mental illness were more likely to have a variety of disorders throughout their lives.

“My team has had the rare opportunity to follow the same 1,000 individuals for several decades now, and one surprising thing that we’ve learned is that the same person moves in and out of different mental disorders across their life,” Moffitt said. “If you ask how many people have a mental illness today, as just a snapshot at one point in time, it does look rare. But, if you track disorders as they unfold across decades of people’s lives you’ll find that many people experience mental disorders, they’re not as rare as we all thought.”

Moffitt also stated that those who accumulated more mental disorder diagnoses earlier in life were found to have an increased risk of physical illness later in life, and aged more rapidly.

“People with mental disorders will age faster and age younger, they’ll have less ability to manage their health as well,” Moffatt said.

Moffitt’s recommendation for treating mental illness moving forward is not to treat individual mental disorders one at a time, but rather to look toward the bigger picture and teach individuals, particularly those in early adulthood, skills for managing stress and maintaining their physical and mental health.

“Of course, it’s really important to treat the presenting symptoms to give the patient relief,” Moffitt said. “But in addition to that, we shouldn’t just stop there. We should also ask how can I help my patients ward off the next disorders? By teaching skills for coping with stress and staying well, and these are skills that transcend any particular diagnosis.”

The Marjorie Pay Hinckley Lecture is a yearly event where the Endowed Chair in Social Work and the Social Sciences sponsors a prominent scholar to visit BYU and share their research.