Stability and Change of Psychopathology Symptoms Throughout Childhood and Adolescence

Elisabet Blok, C. Louk de Mol, Jan van der Ende, Manon H.J. Hillegers, Robert R. Althoff, Philip Shaw, Tonya White*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)
19 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Assessing stability and change of children’s psychopathology symptoms can help elucidate whether specific behaviors are transient developmental variations or indicate persistent psychopathology. This study included 6930 children across early childhood (T1), late childhood (T2) and early adolescence (T3), from the general population. Latent profile analysis identified psychopathology subgroups and latent transition analysis quantified the probability that children remained within, or transitioned across psychopathology subgroups. We identified four psychopathology subgroups; no problems (T1: 85.9%, T2: 79.0%, T3: 78.0%), internalizing (T1: 5.1%, T2: 9.2%, T3: 9.0%), externalizing (T1: 7.3%, T2: 8.3%, T3: 10.2%) and the dysregulation profile (DP) (T1: 1.7%, T2: 3.5%, T3: 2.8%). From T1 to T2, 44.7% of the children remained in the DP. Between T2 and T3, 33.6% remained in the DP; however, 91.4% were classified in one of the psychopathology subgroups. Our findings suggest that for many children, internalizing or externalizing symptoms encompass a transient phase within development. Contrary, the DP resembles a severe at-risk state in which the predictive value for being in one of the psychopathology subgroups increases over time.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1330–1339
Number of pages10
JournalChild Psychiatry and Human Development
Volume53
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Robert R. Althoff has received grant funding from the NIMH/NIDA, has a partnership interest in WISER Systems, LLC and received a honorarium as associate editor of JAACAP from AACAP. The other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Sophia Children’s Hospital Research Foundation (SSWO) Project #S18-68, #S20-48 and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) TOP Project Number 91211021. The general design of the Generation R Study is made possible by financial support from the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, ZonMw, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, and is conducted by the Erasmus Medical Center in close collaboration with the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the Stichting Trombosedienst & Artsenlaboratorium Rijnmond (STAR-MDC), Rotterdam.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).

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