Common and specific features of childhood psychopathology.

This article describes a conceptual and data-analytic model for characterizing different levels of common and specific features of child psychopathology: common features, which differentiate psychopathology from normality; broadband-specific features, which differentiate internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety, somatization) from externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, hyperactivity); and narrowband-specific features, which differentiate different narrowband syndromes (e.g., anxiety from somatization, hyperactivity from aggression) within each of the broadband syndromes. As an illustration of the model, data for 6 cognitive variables (e.g., global self-worth, causal attributions) are related to 6 psychopathology domains (e.g., aggression, depression) in a sample of 204 children. It is suggested that common features may be related to severity of psychopathology, whereas specific features may be more related to differentiation of psychopathology.

Effect of co-occurrence on the referability of internalizing and externalizing problem behavior in adolescents.

Assessed the effect of co-occurring versus not co-occurring internalizing and externalizing behavior problems on the reasons parents reported for clinical referral of their adolescent child. Reasons for referral were coded for 181 inpatient adolescents, and parent ratings of internalizing and externalizing behavior were obtained for a general population sample of 500 adolescents. Parents concurrently reported internalizing and externalizing behavior as reasons for referral less frequently (p < .0001) than would be expected given the correlation between these two domains in the general population sample. This suggests that the presence of externalizing problems may decrease parents' concern or awareness of internalizing problems, the presence of internalizing problems may decrease parents' concern or awareness of externalizing problems, or both. Implications for the clinical referral of adolescents and for informal parental efforts at helping their children with externalizing and internalizing problems are discussed.