An umbrella review of psychological capacity and mental health trajectories across the life course

TL;DR

This study reviews how psychological health changes over a lifetime, showing common low-symptom patterns and highlighting risks like gender and socioeconomic factors.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive umbrella review of psychological capacity trajectories, emphasizing gaps in diversity and quality assessments in mental health research.

Findings

Stable low-symptom trajectories are most common in depression, anxiety, and trauma-related symptoms.

Gender and socioeconomic disadvantage are frequent risk factors, while social support is protective.

There is a lack of research on less common mental health conditions and older adults.

Abstract

Understanding population trajectories of psychological capacities can guide interventions to protect and enhance them across the life course. We conducted an umbrella review of systematic reviews examining the trajectories of a wide range of psychological capacity measures. Searches were performed in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Google Scholar (11 December 2023 and 26 June 2025). Thirty-six reviews synthesizing 1,307 primary studies were included. Here we show that most reviews focused on depression, anxiety and trauma-related symptoms, with stable low-symptom trajectories being most common. Being a girl/woman and socioeconomic disadvantage were frequent risk factors, while social support emerged as protective. We found a comparative lack of reviews focused on less common mental-health conditions, positive outcomes and older adults. Future reviews should engage with a robust quality assessment of the analytical approach used and the (lack of) geographical and sociodemographic diversity in the primary studies included. Similarly, more evidence on the Global South and on minoritized and marginalized groups within populations is needed. The protocol is pre-registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023490490).

This analysis conducted an umbrella review of 36 systematic reviews assessing psychological capacity trajectories. The findings indicate prevalent low-symptom patterns, highlighting gender and socioeconomic factors as risks, while emphasizing the need for diverse, quality assessments in future studies.

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