Concurrent changes in conduct problems and depressive symptoms in early adolescents: a developmental person-centered approach.
The co-occurrence of conduct problems (CP) and depressive symptoms (DS) is an important topic in developmental psychopathology; however, research in this area is still in its early stages. Using data from a school-based longitudinal sample of 2,453 adolescents with five waves from Grade 6 to 9, we examined the prevalence, etiology, and consequences of the co-occurrence of CP and DS. A person-centered approach, general growth mixture modeling, was applied to obtain CP and DS trajectory groups. The risk factors and consequences of the co-occurrence problem were examined using the trajectory groups. As hypothesized in a nonclinical sample, a small proportion of boys (8.8%) and girls (3.7%) reported to be high in both CP and DS over time. Among the adolescents with the highest level of CP, only 6.3% of the boys and 6.0% of the girls experienced the highest level of DS. However, among those with the highest level of DS trajectories, 42.9% of the boys and 10.2% of the girls reported the highest level of CP, indicating a gender-specific risk of the co-occurrence problem for depressed boys. Psychosocial and family factors were identified as vulnerable precursors to co-occurring CP and DS, a finding in line with the multiple domain risk model for CP and the transactional model for DS. The study also found that adolescents with the co-occurrence problem were more similar to those with "pure DS" than those with "pure CP" in academic adjustment at the ninth grade.
Chen
Rusan
R
Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, 3520 Prospect Street, NW #314, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA. chenrs@georgetown.edu
Simons-Morton
Bruce
B
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D009922:Oregon / Q000453:epidemiology; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010379:Peer Group; D015995:Prevalence; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D018401:Sample Size