Co-occurring problems of early onset persistent, childhood limited, and adolescent onset conduct problem youth.

BACKGROUND: It is increasingly recognized that youth who follow early onset persistent (EOP), childhood limited (CL) and adolescent onset (AO) trajectories of conduct problems show somewhat varying patterns of risk (in childhood) and adjustment problems (in adolescence and adulthood). Little, however, is known about how other adjustment problems differentially co-develop with the EOP, CL and AO trajectories across the childhood and adolescent years.

METHOD: Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, an epidemiological, longitudinal cohort of boys and girls, we estimated growth curves for parent-reported hyperactivity, emotional difficulties, peer relational problems, and prosocial behaviors conditional on trajectories of conduct problems (i.e., EOP, CL and AO) from ages 4 to 13 years. At ages 7-8 years, DSM-IV-based diagnoses of conduct disorder, oppositional-defiant disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression were examined by conduct problems trajectory.

RESULTS: Overall, the development of hyperactivity, emotional difficulties, peer relational problems, and prosocial behaviors mirrored the development of conduct problems, showing similar trajectories.

CONCLUSIONS: Results indicated that the problems of EOP youth were persistent across domains, CL youth showed decreased behavior problems while increasing in prosocial behaviors, and AO youth increased in adjustment problems after 10 years of age.