She has been invited by the Department of Psychology to deliver the first of five open Eilert Sundt lectures in celebration of the 200th anniversary.
Terrie Moffitt is a professor of psychology at Duke University (USA) and King's College London (UK), known for her studies on lifelong development and mental disorders, as well as the interaction between social and genetic factors. Her research also includes antisocial and criminal behavior, depression, psychoses, addiction, cognitive aging, and families.
Early prevention
In her lecture, "Good childhoods are smart investments," Terrie Moffitt will explain how a good childhood and brain health can reduce the likelihood of mental, physical, and social problems in adulthood. Politicians and health authorities are focused on early intervention and prevention among children and youth to reduce later mental, physical, and social issues.
The effectiveness of early interventions depends on there being a clear link between childhood risk factors and problems in adulthood. However, there has been disagreement among psychologists and social scientists about the strength of this association.
The Dunedin Study
Terrie Moffitt and her colleagues have combined registry data with a 40-year population study, known as the Dunedin Study, to test how childhood years influence adulthood. They used a new method to categorize the population and concluded:
A significant proportion of the state's expenditure on social welfare, criminal justice, and healthcare is dedicated to a relatively small portion of the population.
World-renowned
Terrie Moffitt has been instrumental in establishing the Dunedin Study in New Zealand and the Environmental-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study in the UK. She has published around 400 international articles, including in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature, and Lancet, and her studies have been cited over 50,000 times.
One-fifth of the population accounted for 36% of insurance claims, 54% of cigarettes smoked, 66% of social service utilization, 78% of prescription medication expenditures, and 81% of criminal convictions.
Risk factors in childhood, including poor brain health at the age of three, accurately predicted the outcomes for this population later in life. Early interventions targeted at this population subset are likely to have a significant impact.
This population subset starts life at a disadvantage compared to many of their peers and, as a result, lags behind. Early interventions and prevention, which improve children's health and reduce social risk factors, can have significant effects, both personally and for families, and may also prove surprisingly profitable for society.
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