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01-11-2019 | Disturbance of the Social Behaviour | Original Contribution

The validity of conduct disorder symptom profiles in high-risk male youth

Authors: Marcel Aebi, Steffen Barra, Cornelia Bessler, Susanne Walitza, Belinda Plattner

Published in: European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry | Issue 11/2019

Abstract

Conduct disorder (CD) is a heterogeneous pattern of rule-breaking and aggressive symptoms. Until now it has been unclear whether valid, clinically useful symptom profiles can be defined for populations in youth at high-risk of CD. Interview-based psychiatric disorders, CD symptoms and officially recorded offences were assessed in boys from a detention facility and a forensic psychiatric hospital (N = 281; age 11.2–21.3 years). We used latent class analyses (LCA) to examine CD subtypes and their relationships with comorbid psychiatric disorders, suicidality, and criminal recidivism. LCA revealed five CD subtypes: no CD, mild aggressive CD, mild covert CD, moderate CD, and severe CD. The severe and, to a lesser degree, the moderate CD subtype were related to comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, substance use disorder, affective disorder, and suicidality. Time to violent criminal re-offending was predicted by severe CD (OR 5.98, CI 2.5–13.80) and moderate CD (OR 4.18, CI 1.89–9.21), but not by any other CD subtype in multivariate Cox regressions (controlling for age, low socioeconomic status and foreign nationality). These results confirm the existence of different CD symptom profiles in a high-risk group. Additional variable-oriented analyses with CD symptom count and aggressive/rule-breaking CD-dimensions further supported a dimensional view and a dose–response relationship of CD and criminal recidivism. Classifying high-risk young people according to the number of aggressive and rule-breaking CD symptoms is of major clinical importance and may provide information about risk of violent recidivism.

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Title: The validity of conduct disorder symptom profiles in high-risk male youth
Authors: Marcel Aebi
Steffen Barra
Cornelia Bessler
Susanne Walitza
Belinda Plattner
Publication date: 01-11-2019
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Keyword: Disturbance of the Social Behaviour
Published in: European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry / Issue 11/2019
Print ISSN: 1018-8827
Electronic ISSN: 1435-165X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-019-01339-z

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The validity of conduct disorder symptom profiles in high-risk male youth

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