Does Anxiety Modify the Risk for, or Severity of, Conduct Problems Among Children With Co-Occurring ADHD: Categorical and Dimensional and Analyses

Abstract

Different methodological measures of ADHD, anxiety, and conduct problem features influenced the outcome of the analyses.

The Development of Co-Occurrent Anxiety and Externalizing Problems from Early Childhood: a Latent Transition Analysis Approach

“…However, after two years of follow-up, the anxiety level in the “co-occurrent” profile was equal to that of “mainly anxious”, depicting a similar pattern to Willner et al ( 2016 ) in their at-risk sample of young children. Taken together these findings complement research which relates the co-occurrence of anxiety and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders with the highest levels of behavioral problems in childhood (Danforth et al, 2019 ; Humphreys et al, 2012 ). Such research was itself based on studies suggesting that anxiety could aggravate the behavioral inhibitory response in children with ADHD (Sørensen et al, 2011 ), thus contributing to the presence of more externalizing problems.…”

“…Certain subtypes of anxious behavior become more prevalent after early childhood (e.g., social anxiety) (Steinsbekk et al, 2021); considering them might reveal distinctions among profiles. This could help clarify the mixed results regarding the role of anxiety (risk vs. protective effect) on externalizing problems (Drabick et al, 2010) that remains an open question in the field (Danforth et al, 2019;Murray et al, 2018).…”

“…One major reason for this is the presence of mixed findings that have been difficult to integrate in a whole framework. More recent findings on the association of anxiety and externalizing problems continue to show mixed results regarding the co-occurrence of anxiety with OD symptoms (Lavigne et al, 2014), ADH symptoms (Becker et al, 2012;Sciberras et al, 2014), or both OD and ADH (Danforth et al, 2019;Murray et al, 2018). Note that these studies frequently included both measures of OD and ADH symptoms, in order to control for the other's potential effects.…”

“…To this end, latent profile and transition models present specific advantages for examining the developmental patterns of concurrent anxiety and externalizing problems over childhood. First, previous studies have already combined measures of anxiety and externalizing to define groups, mostly establishing statistical or clinical cut-off points (e.g., Becker et al, 2012 ; Danforth et al, 2019 ; Yoo et al, 2009 ). However, these investigations rarely use both measures of externalizing problems to define the groups.…”

ADHD and ODD Dimensions: Time Varying Prediction of Internalizing Problems from Childhood to Adolescence

“…Despite the utility of using developmental perspectives to specify covariation among dimensions of psychopathology, including concurrent versus successive comorbidity (Angold et al, 1999), the literature frequently only describes ADHD and concurrent anxiety/mood disorders (e.g., their combination predicted elevated externalizing problems relative to either condition alone; Danforth et al, 2019). However, these models delimit directional inferences and are agnostic about the potential mediating processes.…”