Simple Hair-Test Identifies Children at Highest Risk for Depression and Anxiety
23rd October 2025
“Hair cortisol offers a non-invasive, easy-to-collect biomarker that could one day be used to screen children and track whether treatments or support programs are helping to reduce stress,” study co-author Mark Ferro, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences, said in a press statement.
An estimated 40 percent of children in Canada live with chronic physical illnesses (CPI)—a number that has been increasing over the past decades.
As George Citroner details below for The Epoch Times, those with higher cortisol levels are more likely to develop mental health problems at rates ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent, significantly higher than the prevalence in healthy children, researchers noted.
These conditions can lead to lower quality of life, suicidal thoughts, and greater use of health care services.