A new study of 2,778 children and young people aged four to 25 shows that those growing up in disadvantaged households are significantly more likely to develop mental‑health problems than peers from more affluent families.

Researchers compared parental reports on health, development and behaviour with indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage, including neighbourhood deprivation, parents’ education level and eligibility for free school meals.

Children from deprived neighbourhoods or whose parents had lower educational attainment were more likely to show low mood, anxiety, stress‑related physical symptoms, and difficulties relating to peers.

The study highlighted a stark increase in diagnosed conditions: those eligible for free school meals were 2.5 times more likely to have major depression and 2.3 times more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorder.

These patterns persisted regardless of the severity of the intellectual disability, suggesting that financial and social hardship, rather than the medical condition alone, drives the heightened risk.

The authors recommend that health and social services broaden support to address family‑level socioeconomic factors, including better access to mental‑health assessments and specialist care for low‑income families.

Study limitations include reliance on parent‑reported data, incomplete questionnaire responses from some families, and a cross‑sectional design that cannot establish causality.

Globally, an estimated 16.1 million children under five had intellectual disabilities in 2019, while Kenya’s 2018 survey reported roughly 547,474 children and young people aged three to 21 with such conditions, underscoring the relevance of these findings for Kenyan policy makers.