BACKGROUND There is an urgent need for effective, affordable interventions to prevent child mental health problems in low- and middle-income countries. AIMS To determine the effects of a universal pre-school-based intervention on child conduct problems and social skills at school and at home. METHOD In a cluster randomised design, 24 community pre-schools in inner-city areas of Kingston, Ja...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association of breastfeeding duration with psychosocial development at 6 years of age. METHODS We analyzed data from the 2005-2007 Infant Feeding Practices Study II and its 2012 Year 6 Follow-Up (N = 1442). Our breastfeeding duration variable combined overall and exclusive breastfeeding reported during infancy (never breastfed, breastfed <6 months, breastfed ≥6 months...

BACKGROUND There is a strong case for early identification of factors predicting life-course-persistent conduct disorder. The authors aimed to identify factors associated with repeated parental reports of preschool conduct problems. METHOD Nested case-control study of Scottish children who had behavioural data reported by parents at 3, 4 and 5 years. RESULTS 79 children had abnormal conduct...

OBJECTIVE To explore associations of maternal prenatal smoking and child psychological problems and determine the role of causal intrauterine mechanisms. PATIENTS AND METHODS Maternal smoking and child psychological problems were explored in 2 birth cohorts in Pelotas, Brazil (n = 509, random subsample), and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) in Britain (n = 6735). F...

Despite recent research indicating that 1 of the pivotal times for identifying pathways to early conduct problems is the toddler period, few family-based preventive interventions have been specifically designed to modify child disruptive behavior during this age period. This randomized trial tested the effectiveness of the Family Check-Up in sustaining maternal involvement and preventing the ex...

BACKGROUND Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and autistic traits often occur together. The pattern and etiology of co-occurrence are largely unknown, particularly in adults. This study investigated the co-occurrence between both traits in detail, and subsequently examined the etiology of the co-occurrence, using two independent adult population samples. Method Data on ADH...

Potential risk factors for conduct problems and depressive symptoms were tested in a cohort of 10- to 12-year-old Ukrainian children (N = 544, 47.6% male). Risk factors examined were child emotional lability, child attention problems, poor mother-child communication, coercive maternal discipline, maternal depression, and low marital satisfaction. Results indicated that poor mother-child communi...

Accurate descriptions of sex differences in the development of childhood conduct problems and adolescent delinquency will inform theories of their causes in fundamentally important ways. Using data on 4,572 offspring of a national sample of women, we tested descriptive hypotheses regarding sex differences. As predicted, the magnitude of sex differences varied with age, suggesting that multiple ...

Abnormalities in reward and punishment processing are implicated in the development of conduct problems (CP), particularly among youth with callous-unemotional (CU) traits. However, no studies have examined whether CP children with high versus low CU traits exhibit differences in the neural response to reward and punishment. A clinic-referred sample of CP boys with high versus low CU traits (ag...

BACKGROUND Several theoretical perspectives suggest that emotion dysregulation is a predisposing risk factor for many psychiatric disorders. Yet despite a rapidly evolving literature, difficulties with emotion regulation (ER) are often measured inconsistently across studies, with little regard to whether different approaches capture the same construct. In this study, we evaluate the corresponde...