Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry
Volume 25, Issue 6 , Pages 809-819, November 1986

The Occurrence of Behavior Disorders in Children: The Interdependence of Attention Deficit Disorder and Conduct Disorder

Mr. Shapiro is a Doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Garfinkel is Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55455. Correspondence and reprint requests may be made to Dr. Garfinkel

Received 30 May 1985; accepted 18 September 1985.

Article Outline

A nonreferred elementary school population of 315 children participated in a screening for behavioral problems. The prevalence of inattentive-overactive symptoms suggestive of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) was determined to be 2.3%; 3.6% of the children had aggressive/oppositional symptoms suggestive of Conduct Disorder (CD). Another 3.0% showed both ADD and CD symptoms. Index children comprise 8.9% of the school population and were more likely to come from broken homes and had more remedial education. They also had higher scores on the ADD Interview (DICA) and were more impulsive and disorganized on a computerized attentional battery. There were no symptoms or characteristics that differentiated the inattentive-overactive (ADD) from the aggressive/oppositional (CD) child. Multivariate statistical techniques indicated a different relative importance of individual symptoms in the two groups. These results suggest the interdepencence of symptoms commonly associated with ADD and CD diagnoses.

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 The authors with to thank John Hopwood for his technical assistance in data collection.

PII: S0002-7138(09)60200-4

doi:10.1016/S0002-7138(09)60200-4

Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry
Volume 25, Issue 6 , Pages 809-819, November 1986

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