The results, published in the journal European Psychiatry, provide a solid foundation for improving public policies and the care of people with mental disorders.
The study was led by Michele De Prisco and Vincenzo Oliva, researchers from the IDIBAPS Bipolar and Depressive Disorders group, together with Eduard Vieta, head of the Psychiatry and Psychology Department at Clínic Barcelona and head of the IDIBAPS group, Diego Hidalgo-Mazzei and Gerard Anmella as senior authors of the work.
Mental disorders affect nearly 970 million people worldwide and are one of the main causes of disability. To address this challenge, it is essential to have real-world data that help to understand how these conditions present and are treated in clinical practice.
To this end, researchers created the PADRIS-PRESTO cohort, a database that includes information on more than 1.4 million people in Catalonia between 2010 and 2019. Of these, 473,812 are patients and 947,698 are people without a psychiatric diagnosis.
Anxiety and depression, the most frequent diagnoses
Among the 473,812 patients who accessed specialised mental health services, anxiety disorders (31.38%) and mood disorders (18.83%) were the most common. High rates of behavioural and emotional disorders were also detected in children and adolescents, highlighting the need for specific interventions at these stages of life.
Greater economic vulnerability and associated physical problems
People with mental disorders showed greater economic vulnerability, with more copayment exemptions and fewer individuals in middle- and high-income brackets. In addition, there was a higher prevalence of smoking (48.6% in cases vs. 37.2% in controls) and of physical comorbidities such as musculoskeletal disorders, hypertension or diabetes.
Intensive use of healthcare services
During the study period, more than 76 million primary care visits and around 9.3 million visits to specialised mental health services were recorded in the cohort as a whole. Of the primary care visits, 39,210,518 corresponded to the control group and 37,030,721 to patients, which means that each case made approximately 81 visits during the study period, while each person in the control group made about 41. “In other words, people with mental disorders use healthcare services almost twice as much as the population without a psychiatric diagnosis,” the authors point out. With regard to visits to specialised mental health services, practically all the activity corresponds to the case group (9,294,146 visits among patients vs. 24,669 among controls).
Regarding pharmacological treatments, more than 67 million prescriptions were recorded in the whole cohort, a substantial proportion of which were for antidepressants and anxiolytics. The authors of the study note that this volume of prescriptions reflects the clinical complexity and therapeutic needs of this population, but they also stress the importance of reviewing prescribing patterns to ensure that they are aligned with clinical indications.
A key tool for health planning
The PADRIS-PRESTO cohort is a key tool for understanding mental health in Catalonia and improving care for affected individuals. The results make it possible to identify priority areas for intervention, optimise resource allocation and design more effective treatment strategies. In addition, its population-based approach facilitates the extrapolation of the findings to other regions with similar health systems.
Study reference
De Prisco M, Oliva V, Fico G, Mas A, Valenzuela-Pascual C, Montejo L, Bort M, Sommerhoff C, Bortolozzi A, Miquel-Rio L, Vilella E, Forte MF, Fortea L, Fernández T, Giménez-Palomo A, Sague Vilavella M, Madero S, Llorca Bofí V, Bioque M, Grande I, Murru A, Pacchiarotti I, Cavero M, Blanch J, Viñas-Bardolet C, Aparicio-Nogué V, Martínez-Cerdá JF, Parellada E, Martínez-Arán A, Radua J, Vieta E, Hidalgo-Mazzei D, Anmella G. The PADRIS-PRESTO cohort: A comprehensive population-based study on mental health in Catalonia. European Psychiatry. 2025; 68(1): e144. https://doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2025.10103
