Frontiers in Psychiatry (Jul 2021)

Heterogeneity Within Youth With Childhood-Onset Conduct Disorder in the ABCD Study

  • Sarah J. Brislin,
  • Meghan E. Martz,
  • Lora M. Cope,
  • Jillian E. Hardee,
  • Alexander Weigard,
  • Mary M. Heitzeg

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.701199
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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The purpose of this study was to examine if personality traits can be used to characterize subgroups of youth diagnosed with childhood-onset conduct disorder (CD). Participants were 11,552 youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Data used in this report came from doi: 10.15154/1504041 (M age 9.92; 45.3% female, 49.6% white, 19.0% Hispanic). A subset of this sample (n = 365) met criteria for CD. Latent profile analyses (LPA) were performed on this subgroup (n = 365) to define profiles of individuals with CD based on self-report measures of impulsivity, punishment sensitivity, reward response, and callous-unemotional traits. Follow up analyses determined if these groups differed on clinically relevant variables including psychopathology, environmental risk factors, social risk factors, and neurocognitive functioning. Participants with a CD diagnosis scored significantly higher on psychological, environmental, social, and neurocognitive risk factors. The LPA revealed three unique profiles, which differed significantly on liability for broad psychopathology and domain-specific liability for externalizing psychopathology but were largely matched on environmental and social risk factors. These unique configurations provide a useful way to further parse clinically relevant subgroups within youth who meet criteria for childhood-onset CD, setting the stage for prospective longitudinal research using these latent profiles to better understand the development of youth with childhood-onset CD.

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