6 Mood Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence and Their Outcome in Adulthood Ulf Engqvist Mid Sweden University Sweden 1. Introduction In this chapter occurrence of mood disorders in a child and adolescent psychiatric population and among patients visiting a youth psychiatric clinic for young adults in a smaller county council and province study area in Sweden is described. It also describes the outcome in adulthood for patients having mood disorder in childhood and adolescence in terms of later general psychiatric care and diagnoses, mortality and criminality. Mood disorders refer to a category of mental health problems that include all types of depression and bipolar disorder. They are defined by ICD-10 chapter V, block F30-F39 and described from reasons for admission and diagnoses given at a child and adolescent psychiatric clinic, and from the patients' own descriptions of their symptoms when they visited a youth psychiatric clinic for young adults. 1.1 Psychiatry in Sweden Psychiatry is one of the most large-scale caring sectors in our time. It is probably the most changeable, and widely prejudice loaded sector in the health care system in Sweden. Among the most rapidly growing, controversy-ridden, and attention-attracting area of history over the past generation has been the history of psychiatry (Ottosson 2003) Psychiatry is not at all a uniform concept. In Sweden, there are three psychiatric settings, general (adult) psychiatry, forensic psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry working with adult patients, children and young people up to 18 years and mentally disordered offenders, respectively (Levander et al. 2006).Without being a speciality there are also units for geriatric psychiatry in some hospitals. Particularly, in the research work delimitation of psychiatry is made with consideration to method and theoretical basis in for example dynamic psychiatry, social psychiatry and biological psychiatry (Ottosson 2009). Psychiatry has a history dating back to medieval times when the church organized the first care of the sick in Sweden and the health care facilities belonged to the monasteries. In the 18 th century the madhouses played a more important role. General hospitals for care of physical diseases were established but he mentally ill remained at the “madhouses” (Gunnarsson 2006 ). Round 1860 several large changes within psychiatry and psychiatric care in Sweden was effected. A new regulation was sanctioned, psychiatry became an