Children with co-occurring anxiety and externalizing disorders: Family risks and implications for competence.

• DOI: 10.1037/a0017848
• Publication Date: 2010-01-26T15:29:40Z
• Authors: Joan P. Yoo; Pamela J. Brown; Suniya S. Luthar
• Keywords: Male; Adolescent; Intelligence; 05 social sciences; Child Behavior Disorders; Anxiety; Mother-Child Relations; Adolescent Behavior; Risk Factors; Adaptation, Psychological; Prevalence; Educational Status; Humans; Female; 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences; Child; Maternal Behavior

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.