Poor mental health as child limits capacity to work in later life, study finds

The IPPR thinktank recommended that the government safeguard funding for children and for preventative spending in the NHS and other public services. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Children in Great Britain with serious mental health conditions are two-thirds more likely to have a limited ability to work in adulthood, according to research from a leading thinktank.

The report by researchers at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) looked at data from about 6,000 people who took part in the 1970 British Cohort Study, which is following the lives of individuals born in a single week in 1970 across Great Britain.