Trajectories of Verbal and Physical Peer Victimization Among Children with Comorbid Oppositional Defiant Problems, Conduct Problems and Hyperactive-Attention Problems

The Impact of Internalizing Symptoms on Impairment for Children With ADHD: A Strength-Based Perspective

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE

This study aims to investigate the influence of internalizing symptoms on functional impairment for children with ADHD, and whether child strengths and parenting strengths have moderating effects on this relationship.

METHODS

Participants included 209 children with ADHD and their caregivers seeking mental health services between the ages of 5 and 11 years. To examine the moderating effects of parenting and child strengths, ordinary least squares regression models were tested using the PROCESS macro for SPSS (v3.5).

RESULTS

Results suggest that levels of internalizing symptoms influence functional impairment in children with ADHD. Child strengths moderate the relationship between internalizing symptoms and functional impairment when internalizing symptoms are medium to high.

CONCLUSION

Findings from this study demonstrate that facilitating child strengths can help moderate functional impairment for children who experience ADHD and internalizing symptoms.

Longitudinal Associations Between Trauma Exposure and Executive Functions in Children: Findings from a Dutch Birth Cohort Study

This study is the first to distinguish two possible predictive directions between trauma exposure and executive functioning in children in a community sample. The sample consists of 1006 children from two time points with a seven years’ time interval of a longitudinal Dutch birth cohort study, the ABCD-study (Van Eijsden et al., 2011). We analyzed the longitudinal associations between trauma exposure and executive functioning using structural equation modeling. The results demonstrated that (after controlling for prenatal substance exposure and mothers’ educational level) trauma exposure before age 5 is predictive of poorer executive functioning at age 12 and trauma exposure between age 6 and 12. However, the association between executive functioning at age 5 and trauma exposure between age 6 and 12 was not statistically significant. Our results indicate that early life trauma exposure has a long term impact on later executive functioning and not the other way around. On top of that, trauma exposure seems to accumulate across childhood when children are exposed to a traumatic event before the age of 5. When looking at the potential moderating role of parenting behavior we found no evidence for such a moderating effect of parenting behavior. Our findings showed that children exposed to trauma early in life may experience problems in executive functioning later in life and they seem at higher risk for cumulative trauma exposure. Clinical practice should take this into account in both the way they provide (early) mental health care and in prevention and recognition of early trauma exposure.

Understanding Youth Perceptions of Neighborhood Disorder: The Role of Conduct Problems

While research addresses neighborhood disorder as leading to conduct problems, the role of individual-level differences in shaping adolescent perceptions of neighborhood has been overlooked. Data on youth, over-selected for childhood conduct problems (N = 744, 58% childhood conduct problems, 47% girls), were used to examine the link between conduct problems (time 1: Mean age = 12.23) and perceived neighborhood disorder (time 3: M = 14.30). The mediating role of delinquent friends, peer victimization, depressive symptoms, and observer-rated neighborhood disorder (time 2: M = 13.23) were also tested. Conduct problems were associated with higher levels of perceived neighborhood disorder, via delinquent peers and peer victimization. These findings offer new insight into the consequences of perceived neighborhood disorder for health and wellbeing.