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Predictors and outcomes of self-reported dysregulation profiles in youth from age 11 to 21 years

European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry volume 29, pages 1349–1361 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Understanding the dysregulation profile (DP) consisting of high scores in aggression, attention problems, and anxious/depressed problems is still limited. The aims of the present study were threefold: (a) to analyze developmental trajectories of DP (b) to identify predictors of these trajectories, and (c) to study the outcome of DP in terms of mental disorders and criminal offenses in young adulthood. A sample of 402 individuals aged 11–14 years at baseline was followed up during adolescence and young adulthood. Latent class growth analysis was used to identify DP based on the youth self-report and the young adult self-report. Self-related cognitions, perceived parental behavior, life events and coping served as predictors, psychiatric diagnoses and criminal convictions in young adulthood as outcomes. There were three developmental trajectories representing high, moderate, and low DP subgroups with 9.2% of participants represented by the high DP subgroup. Among predictors, self-esteem (negative), self-awareness (positive), and high numbers of life events had the most consistent effect on high DP. Affective and anxiety disorders and any mental disorder were significant outcomes of the high DP subgroup in both sexes at the time of young adulthood. This first report on DP based on longitudinal self-reports shows that DP is stable for a sizeable proportion of youth during adolescence and young adulthood. The predictors for DP share some similarity with those predicting psychopathology in general. However, so far there seems to be no heightened risk for the development of crime in the concerned individuals.

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Funding

Data collections for the present study were supported by grants provided by the Johan Jacobs Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation awarded to Professor Steinhausen. The funding sources had no role in the study design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, the writing of the article, or decision to submit the article for publication.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Zurich, Switzerland

    Marcel Aebi, Christa Winkler Metzke & Hans-Christoph Steinhausen

  2. Department of Forensic Psychiatry, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Neptunstrasse 60, 8032, Zurich, Switzerland

    Marcel Aebi

  3. Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology, Institute of Psychology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Hans-Christoph Steinhausen

  4. Department of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Hans-Christoph Steinhausen

  5. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Centre, Capital Region Psychiatry, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Hans-Christoph Steinhausen

Authors
  1. Marcel Aebi
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  2. Christa Winkler Metzke
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  3. Hans-Christoph Steinhausen
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Correspondence to Marcel Aebi.

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Conflict of interest

Drs. Aebi, Winkler Metzke, and Steinhausen report no potential conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

An ethics committee did not exist at the study center (based at the University of Zurich) or in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, to give approval at the time the data collection started in the 1990s. The original study by the principal investigator had been approved and supported by the local Department of Education (a governmental institution of the canton of Zurich) and the informed consent of the parents of all participating students had been obtained. The use of anonymized data on crime outcomes was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Canton of Zurich and data were delivered by a government institution, namely, the Swiss Federal Office of Justice. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Aebi, M., Winkler Metzke, C. & Steinhausen, HC. Predictors and outcomes of self-reported dysregulation profiles in youth from age 11 to 21 years. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 29, 1349–1361 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-019-01444-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-019-01444-z

Keywords

  • Dysregulation profile
  • Psychopathology
  • Adolescence
  • Young adulthood
  • Crime
  • Risks