Background: Recently, school mobility was identified as a risk factor for psychotic symptoms in early adolescence. The extent to which this risk continues into late adolescence and the trajectories via which this risk manifests remain unexplored. Methods: Psychotic symptoms in 4,720 adolescents aged 18 were ascertained by trained psychologists…

Background: Many low- and middle-income countries have high levels of violence. Research in high-income countries shows that risk factors in the perinatal period are significant precursors of conduct problems which can develop into violence. It is not known whether the same early influences are important in lower income settings with higher rates…

Background: Early substance use co-occurs with youths' self-organization into deviant peer groups in which substance use is central to social interaction. We hypothesized that the social dynamics of deviant peer groups amplify the risk of progressing from early use to later dependence, and that this influence occurs over and above escalations…

Background: Research shows high co-morbidity between gambling problems and depressive symptoms, but the directionality of this link is unclear. Moreover, the co-occurrence of gambling problems and depressive symptoms could be spurious and explained by common underlying risk factors such as impulsivity and socio-family risk. The goals of the…

Background: Loneliness is assumed to peak in early adolescence and to decrease throughout middle and late adolescence, but longitudinal confirmation of this tendency is lacking. Behavioral genetic studies with twin designs have found a significant genetic component for loneliness in children and adults, but no molecular genetic studies have been…

Background: Little is known about the development of anxiety symptoms from late childhood to late adolescence. The present study determined developmental trajectories of symptoms of separation anxiety disorder (SAD), social phobia (SoPh), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder (PD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in a large…

Background: There is considerable evidence suggesting that many children show conduct problems that are specific to a given context (home; school). What is less well understood is the extent to which children with situation-specific conduct problems show similar outcomes to those with generalised conduct problems. Methods: Data were gathered as…

Background: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is designed to measure psychological adjustment in children and adolescents. Psychometric evaluations of the instrument have shown satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity, while factor analysis studies have shown mixed results across countries. In the present study, the…

Background: Previous theory and research suggest links between substance use and externalizing behavior problems, but links between substance use and internalizing problems are less clear. The present study sought to understand concurrent links among diagnoses of substance use disorders, internalizing disorders, and behavior disorders at age 18 as…

Background: Health risk behaviors like substance use (alcohol, tobacco, soft/hard drugs) and risky sexual behavior become more prevalent in adolescence. Children with behavior problems are thought to be prone to engage in health risk behaviors later in life. It is, however, unclear which problems within the externalizing spectrum account for these…

Background: This longitudinal study of 48 children diagnosed with autism at 2-5 years of age was designed to test the hypothesis that diagnosis would remain stable for most of the sample but that there would be improvements in symptom severity, adaptive behavior, and emotional responsiveness in adolescence. Methods: A sample of children with…

Background: Individual differences in depressive symptoms have been linked with social skill deficits in adults and children, yet empirical studies on adolescents are lacking. The present research examines age and gender differences in nonverbal behaviour between mildly depressed and nondepressed (pre-) adolescents during conversations with an…

Background: Research examining intergenerational transmission of psychopathology is often limited by reliance on the same individuals for information on multiple constructs of interest. To counteract this limitation, data from a prospective, longitudinal study of at-risk youth were analyzed to test the hypothesis that parenting and family…