Abstract
Youth with conduct problems comprise a heterogeneous group of children and adolescents who engage in a broad array of problem behaviors ranging from defiance, argumentativeness, and temper outbursts to physical aggression, destructiveness, and stealing. Taken together, these problem behaviors continue to be the most frequent basis for child and adolescent referrals to mental health clinics and residential treatment facilities and are of great concern because of the high degree of impairment associated with them, their potential for persistence over time, and their association with negative life outcomes (Cohen et al., 1993; Lahey, Loeber, Quay, Frick, & Grimm, 1997; Loeber et al., 2000). Indeed, youth with clinically significant levels of oppositional and conduct problems often face a wide range of individual, family, and community-wide difficulties including interpersonal conflicts, violent behavior, delinquent acts, out-of-home placements, and involvement with the juvenile justice system. They are also estimated to be the most costly of all mental health problems in the United States (Cohen, 1998).
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Wolff, J.C., Ollendick, T.H. (2011). Conduct Problems in Youth: Phenomenology, Classification, and Epidemiology. In: Murrihy, R., Kidman, A., Ollendick, T. (eds) Clinical Handbook of Assessing and Treating Conduct Problems in Youth. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6297-3_1
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