Diagnostic specificity and nonspecificity in the dimensions of….pdfVIP

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 48:10 (2007), pp 1005–1013 doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01770.x Diagnostic specificity and nonspecificity in the dimensions of preschool psychopathology Sonya Sterba,1 Helen L. Egger,2 and Adrian Angold2 1Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; 2Center for Developmental Epidemiology, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center, USA Background: The appropriateness of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) nosology for classifying preschool mental health disturbances continues to be debated. To inform this debate, we investigate whether preschool psychopathology shows differentiation along diagnostically specific lines when DSM-IV symptoms are aggregated statistically. Methods: One thousand seventy-three parents of preschoolers aged 2–5 years attending a large pediatric clinic com- pleted the Child Behavior Checklist 1.5–5. A stratified probability sample of 193 parents of high scorers and 114 parents of low scorers were interviewed with the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA). Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on symptoms from seven DSM disor- ders. Results: Comparison of competing models supported the differentiation of emotional syndromes into three factors: social phobia (SOC), separation anxiety (SAD), and depression/generalized anxiety (MDD/GAD), and the differentiation of disruptive syndromes into three factors: oppositional defiant/ conduct syndrome (ODD/CD), hyperactivity/impulsivity, and inattention. Latent syndrome correla- tions were moderately high a