TRAILS

In the period between childhood and adulthood, adolescents experience major changes that affect more than just their bodies. The way in which they interact with others, and how they experience and process everything they go through, change in this period too. They make choices and choose directions in these transitional years that can have a significant impact on their wellbeing and health in the future. A key component of TRAILS relates to mental (ill) health. Greater knowledge of the causes of (ill) health may help to prevent problems or treat them promptly.

TRAILS stands for Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey. It is a longitudinal, multidisciplinary research study of the mental, social and physical development of over 2,500 adolescents progressing towards adulthood in the Northern Netherlands. Every two years since 2001, these adolescents have participated in questionnaires, interviews and other tests. The study focuses on both physical and mental development.

Around 500 participants are or were Accare clients. The remaining approximately 2,000 participants are adolescents from the Northern Netherlands whom we have not treated. Apart from the adolescents themselves, the study also involves their parents, teachers, classmates, brothers and sisters. This has supported a broad-based collection of data, offering information about social, psychological and biological factors.

TRAILS is disseminating the knowledge generated within different sub-studies to (inter)national subject specialist peers, colleagues in mental healthcare and education, patients, policy makers and other stakeholders.

TRAILS is carried out by the University of Groningen and Erasmus University Rotterdam. The St. Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen and the University of Utrecht are also involved. Around 40 academic investigators, including some Accare researchers, are working on TRAILS.

The TRAILS study has already produced many results. These can be seen on the research study website.