Open AccessChildren With Co‐Occurring Anxiety and Externalizing Disorders: Family Risks and Implications for Competence
Author(s) -
Yoo Joan P.,
Brown Pamela J.,
Luthar Suniya S.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american journal of orthopsychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.959
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1939-0025
pISSN - 0002-9432
DOI - 10.1037/a0017848
Subject(s) - anxiety , psychology , externalization , competence (human resources) , clinical psychology , medical diagnosis , multinomial logistic regression , co occurrence , logistic regression , developmental psychology , adaptive functioning , psychiatry , medicine , social psychology , pathology , machine learning , computer science , psychoanalysis , artificial intelligence
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.