Abstract
Childhood aggression and its resulting consequences inflict a huge burden on affected children, their relatives, teachers, peers and society as a whole. Aggression during childhood rarely occurs in isolation and is correlated with other symptoms of childhood psychopathology. In this paper, we aim to describe and improve the understanding of the co-occurrence of aggression with other forms of childhood psychopathology. We focus on the co-occurrence of aggression and other childhood behavioural and emotional problems, including other externalising problems, attention problems and anxiety–depression. The data were brought together within the EU-ACTION (Aggression in Children: unravelling gene-environment interplay to inform Treatment and InterventiON strategies) project. We analysed the co-occurrence of aggression and other childhood behavioural and emotional problems as a function of the child’s age (ages 3 through 16 years), gender, the person rating the behaviour (father, mother or self) and assessment instrument. The data came from six large population-based European cohort studies from the Netherlands (2x), the UK, Finland and Sweden (2x). Multiple assessment instruments, including the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL), the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and Multidimensional Peer Nomination Inventory (MPNI), were used. There was a good representation of boys and girls in each age category, with data for 30,523 3- to 4-year-olds (49.5% boys), 20,958 5- to 6-year-olds (49.6% boys), 18,291 7- to 8-year-olds (49.0% boys), 27,218 9- to 10-year-olds (49.4% boys), 18,543 12- to 13-year-olds (48.9% boys) and 10,088 15- to 16-year-olds (46.6% boys). We replicated the well-established gender differences in average aggression scores at most ages for parental ratings. The gender differences decreased with age and were not present for self-reports. Aggression co-occurred with the majority of other behavioural and social problems, from both externalising and internalising domains. At each age, the co-occurrence was particularly prevalent for aggression and oppositional and ADHD-related problems, with correlations of around 0.5 in general. Aggression also showed substantial associations with anxiety–depression and other internalizing symptoms (correlations around 0.4). Co-occurrence for self-reported problems was somewhat higher than for parental reports, but we found neither rater differences, nor differences across assessment instruments in co-occurrence patterns. There were large similarities in co-occurrence patterns across the different European countries. Finally, co-occurrence was generally stable across age and sex, and if any change was observed, it indicated stronger correlations when children grew older. We present an online tool to visualise these associations as a function of rater, gender, instrument and cohort. In addition, we present a description of the full EU-ACTION projects, its first results and the future perspectives.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1105-1121 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 9 |
Early online date | 29 May 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sept 2018 |
Funding
The ACTION consortium is supported by funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant agreement no. 602768. Data collection in the NTR was supported by NWO: Twin-family database for behavior genetics and genomics studies (480-04-004); “Spinozapremie” (NWO/SPI 56-464-14192; “Genetic and Family influences on Adolescent psychopathology and Wellness” (NWO 463-06-001); “A twin-sib study of adolescent wellness” (NWO-VENI 451-04-034); ZonMW “Genetic influences on stability and change in psychopathology from childhood to young adulthood” (912-10-020); “Netherlands Twin Registry Repository” (480-15-001/674) and KNAW Academy Professor Award (PAH/6635) to DIB. We warmly thank all participating twin families. Data collection in Finntwin12 has been supported by ENGAGE—European Network for Genetic and Genomic Epidemiology, FP7-HEALTH-F4-2007, grant agreement number 201413, National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (Grants AA-12502, AA-00145 and AA-09203 to RJ Rose), the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence Program (Grants 213506, 129680 to JK) and the Academy of Finland (Grants 100499, 205585, 118555, 141054, 265240, 263278 and 264146 to JK). The Child and Adolescent Twin Study (CATSS) in Sweden study was supported by the Swedish Council for Working Life, funds under the ALF agreement, the Söderström-Königska Foundation and the Swedish Research Council (Medicine and SIMSAM). The Swedish Twin study of Child and Adolescent Development (TCHAD) was supported by the Swedish Council for Working Life and the Swedish Research Council (Medicine and SIMSAM). Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) is supported by a program grant from the UK Medical Research Council (MR/M021475/1). The Generation R Study is made possible by financial support from: Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw). H. Tiemeier is supported by grants of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (Gravity Grant No. 024.001.003, Consortium on Individual Development) and a NWO-VICI grant (NWO-ZonMW: 016.VICI.170.200). This article is part of the focused issue ‘Conduct Disorder and Aggressive Behaviour in Children and Adolescents’. On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest. Acknowledgements The ACTION consortium is supported by funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007– 2013) under Grant agreement no. 602768. Data collection in the NTR was supported by NWO: Twin-family database for behavior genetics and genomics studies (480-04-004); “Spinozapremie” (NWO/SPI 56-464-14192; “Genetic and Family influences on Adolescent psychopathology and Wellness” (NWO 463-06-001); “A twin-sib study of adolescent wellness” (NWO-VENI 451-04-034); ZonMW “Genetic influences on stability and change in psychopathology from childhood to young adulthood” (912-10-020); “Netherlands Twin Registry Repository” (480-15-001/674) and KNAW Academy Professor Award (PAH/6635) to DIB. We warmly thank all participating twin families. Data collection in Finntwin12 has been supported by ENGAGE— European Network for Genetic and Genomic Epidemiology, FP7-HEALTH-F4-2007, grant agreement number 201413, National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (Grants AA-12502, AA-00145 and AA-09203 to RJ Rose), the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence Program (Grants 213506, 129680 to JK) and the Academy of Finland (Grants 100499, 205585, 118555, 141054, 265240, 263278 and 264146 to JK). The Child and Adolescent Twin Study (CATSS) in Sweden study was supported by the Swedish Council for Working Life, funds under the ALF agreement, the Söderström-Königska Foundation and the Swedish Research Council (Medicine and SIMSAM). The Swedish Twin study of Child and Adolescent Development (TCHAD) was supported by the Swedish Council for Working Life and the Swedish Research Council (Medicine and SIMSAM). Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) is supported by a program grant from the UK Medical Research Council (MR/M021475/1). The Generation R Study is made possible by financial support from: Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw). H. Tiemeier is supported by grants of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (Gravity Grant No. 024.001.003, Consortium on Individual Development) and a NWO-VICI grant (NWO-ZonMW: 016.VICI.170.200).
Funders | Funder number |
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ENGAGE | |
Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam | |
FP7-HEALTH-F4-2007 | 201413 |
NWO-VICI | |
SIMSAM | |
Swedish Council for Working Life | |
Söderström-Königska Foundation | |
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism | AA-00145, AA-09203, R01AA012502 |
Seventh Framework Programme | 602768, 480-04-004, 463-06-001, NWO-VENI 451-04-034, NWO/SPI 56-464-14192 |
Medical Research Council | MR/M021475/1 |
Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen | PAH/6635 |
ZonMw | 480-15-001/674, 912-10-020 |
Academy of Finland | 141054, 264146, 205585, 118555, 263278, 265240, 100499, 213506, 129680 |
Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap | 024.001.003 |
Vetenskapsrådet | |
Seventh Framework Programme |
Keywords
- Aggression
- Behavioural and emotional problems
- Childhood
- Co-occurence
- Comorbidity
Cohort Studies
- Netherlands Twin Register (NTR)