Wherever they're bad – it's bad

A new study based on data from the Christchurch Health and Development Study [1] has found that the majority of childhood conduct problems are situation specific – confined to home or to school.

Published in the journal Child Psychology and Psychiatry, the investigation also found that where conduct problems occurred did not make much difference: trouble at home or at school was similarly bad news.

For children with conduct disorders, the risk of crime, mental health issues, substance abuse and parenting/relationship issues in their adult lives turned out to be between one and a half and three times greater. Problems at home and school increased the risk, but not to any statistically significant degree.

The University of Otago's longitudinal study has been following the progress of over a thousand children from New Zealand’s second city since 1977.

The latest trawl has re-examined information on conduct problems collected from parents and teachers when children were between the ages of seven and nine. Their definition refers to a range of behavior including disobedience, defiance of authority, temper tantrums, aggression, lying and stealing. It was linked with several measures of criminal offending, mental health, substance abuse and relationship issues assessed when the participants were between the ages of 16 and 25.

The assessment by David Fergusson, Joseph Boden and John Horwood at the University of Otago acknowledges conflicting reports of children’s behavior given by parents and teachers. Previously, this had been interpreted as a lack of accuracy or consistency.

However, given that children who were classified as having a conduct disorder by their mother only, their teacher only or both were all at a high risk of poor outcomes in adulthood, the study now suggests that many childhood conduct problems are “situational” and may occur in one context and not another.

If conduct problems are indeed context specific, it may have important implications for how children are selected for treatment. As things stand, if treatment is dependent on matching reports from two sources, the vast majority of children will miss out, despite them being as much at risk of poor outcomes later in life. Equally, if treatment is based on only one report - for example, a parent’s - a similarly high proportion of cases will be overlooked.

Experts must also find a place for the contextual nature of conduct problems and other developmental issues in theories of child development which currently eschew the issue, say the authors.

They recommend that teachers' and mother’s reports about children should in future be backed up by observational data from researchers.

Fergusson and his colleagues acknowledge that the Christchurch data applies only to a specific context and historical period. Whether the same patterns would be found in other areas and countries must be verified by future research.

See” Fergusson D M, Boden J M and Horwood L J (2009), “Situational and generalised conduct problems and later life outcomes: Evidence from a New Zealand birth cohort,” Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 50, 9, 1084-1092

[See also: Remember: it doesn’t ever have to be like this [2]]