New report: Psychiatric diagnoses among children and young people in the Nordic countries
Children’s mental health is high on the policy agenda across the Nordic countries. But what do the data actually show, and how comparable are the trends we often discuss?
A new report from the Nordic Medico-Statistical Committee (NOMESCO) examines how psychiatric diagnoses among children and young people have developed over time across the Nordic region, and how comparable these statistics are between countries. Commissioned by the Nordic Committee for Children and Young People (NORDBUK), the report responds to growing attention to children’s mental health and the need for a stronger, shared evidence base.
Drawing on health register data from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Åland and the Faroe Islands, the report offers a cross-country perspective grounded in how mental health is recorded in practice.
Key insights
Across the region, the number of children and young people receiving psychiatric diagnoses has increased over the past decade. This includes conditions such as ADHD, anxiety and autism. But the data also points to a more nuanced picture. Rising numbers reflect not only changes in mental health, but also increased awareness, expanded services and shifts in how diagnoses are made and recorded. The clearest example is ADHD: in the latest year available, one-year prevalence ranged from 17.6 per 1,000 in Norway to 48.9 per 1,000 in Iceland, with levels of 25.7 in Denmark, 27.3 in Finland, 27.4 in Sweden and 29 in the Faroe Islands. In Iceland alone, ADHD prevalence rose from 13.0 to 48.9 per 1,000 between 2010 and 2024, while anxiety and OCD increased from 4.6 to 33.1 per 1,000 over the same period.
As Mika Gissler from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, and one of the report’s authors, puts it:
“It is easy to look at rising numbers and think something is getting worse. But what is interesting is why they are changing, because it is not just about mental health itself, it is also about how much better we have become at recognising and identifying what was already there. This report helps put those changes into context, so we can better understand what the numbers actually mean.”
Patterns also differ between girls and boys. Anxiety, depression and stress-related conditions are more commonly diagnosed among girls, while ADHD and autism are more common among boys. These differences appear consistently across countries, even if their scale varies. In Finland in 2024, for example, anxiety and OCD affected 23.9 per 1,000 girls compared with 7.4 per 1,000 boys, while ADHD affected 34.4 per 1,000 boys and 19.8 per 1,000 girls.
At the same time, the report shows that national healthcare systems shape what becomes visible in the data. Differences in access to care, service organisation and data coverage all influence what is recorded (and what is not).
By bringing these perspectives together, the report offers a clearer view of both shared trends and national differences. It provides a basis for understanding how children’s mental health is developing across the Nordic region, and for supporting more informed discussions on policy and practice.
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