Low educational attainment and problems with employment are common among people with psychiatric disorders. Psychiatric disorders often start in childhood or adolescence.

The main goal of this thesis was to give an overview of later educational attainment and labour market outcomes for children and adolescents with psychiatric or neurodevelopmental problems.

We used the Finnish 1987 and 1997 birth cohort studies, which include everyone born in those years in Finland. In addition to this we used the national 1981 birth cohort, which consists of a representative sample of 10% of those born that year. In each of these years, around 60,000 people were born in Finland. The studies include information from a large number of registers. The 1981 birth cohort study also includes questionnaire data.

There were strong associations between all main psychiatric diagnostic groups and being outside of the labour market in young adulthood. The strongest associations were found for psychotic and autism spectrum disorders. In these groups, over a third was not in employment, education, or training for over five years between the age of 20 and 28. These associations were independent of sociodemographic factors. Those that had a diagnosed psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorder in adolescence and did not finish upper secondary education were especially prone to be outside of the labour market in young adulthood.

Psychiatric symptoms in childhood were associated with educational attainment at the age of 35 years, independent of the educational attainment of the parents or the family structure. The proportion of those diagnosed with a psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorder in early adolescence who had dropped out of school before upper secondary education increased between the 1987 and 1997 cohorts.

Targeting psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and adolescence, providing rehabilitation, and fighting stigma seem to be crucial if we want to prevent labour market marginalisation of young people.