Citation

Yoo JP, Brown PJ, Luthar SS. Am. J. Orthopsychiatry 2009; 79(4): 532-540.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, American Orthopsychiatric Association, Publisher Wiley Blackwell)

DOI

10.1037/a0017848

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study used data from 340 mother-child dyads to examine characteristics of children with co-occurring diagnoses of anxiety and externalizing disorders and compared them with children with a sole diagnosis or no diagnosis. Comparisons were made using 4 child-diagnostic groups: anxiety-only, externalizing-only, co-occurrence, and no-problem groups. Most mothers were characterized by low income and histories of psychiatric diagnoses during the child's lifetime. Analyses using multinomial logistic regressions found the incidence of co-occurring childhood disorders to be significantly linked with maternal affective/anxiety disorders during the child's lifetime. In exploring implications for developmental competence, we found the co-occurrence group to have the lowest level of adaptive functioning among the 4 groups, faring significantly worse than the no-problem group on both academic achievement and intelligence as assessed by standardized tests. Findings underscore the importance of considering co-occurring behavior problems as a distinct phenomenon when examining children's developmental outcomes.