A long-term follow-up study of adolescents with conduct disorder: Can outcome be predicted from self-concept and...

This study examines Swedish young adults (age 21) with a history of conduct disorder (CD) in adolescence. Research has established CD as a condition for a range of adverse outcomes. Intelligence, aggression, parent-child conflict, parent-child relation and peer-rejection are known factors influencing the outcome.

The aim of this longitudinal study is to find how self-confidence and intelligence in an inpatient group diagnosed with CD are related to health in young adulthood.

The subjects were diagnosed with CD in their adolescence at the inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric unit. Using structured questionnaires as independent variables, this study uses multiple regression analysis to predict health outcomes.

The results showed that self-concept and verbal intelligence could significantly predict health outcomes. However, in the multivariate analysis, only self-concept variables significantly predicted the outcome. The predicted outcome was small, but substantial in most models (R(2)=0.12-0.25).

This means that clinicians need to be humble in forecasting individual adult health among adolescents with severe CD. According to this study, it is difficult to separate positive and negative outcomes. We suggest that this structural data has better prediction potential than medical casebook data. If this is the general case, this psychometric data paves the way for more structural ways of assessing child and adolescence psychiatric problems.