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Published Online: 1 November 2012

Dispelling the “They’ll Grow Out of It” Myth: Implications for Intervention

Although the field of infant/preschool mental health is not young, it has been met with high levels of skepticism and has yet to be well integrated into mainstream psychiatry. As outlined by Bufferd et al. in their landmark paper in this issue (1), efforts to empirically investigate and validate mental disorders in early childhood have faced a number of impediments. These have included concern that diagnostic labels might stigmatize young children; the lack—until recently—of developmentally sensitive, age-appropriate measures of psychopathology that make accurate distinctions from developmental norms; and, perhaps most importantly, a long-held underlying belief that early emotional and behavioral problems represent normative extremes that young children simply grow out of. Bufferd and colleagues’ longitudinal study of a large community sample adds to the literature and provides some of the most rigorous broad-based data to date refuting this notion.
Building on the growing body of literature validating the onset of numerous axis I psychiatric disorders as early as age 3 (25), Bufferd et al. provide findings from a relatively large community sample of 3-year-old children assessed using a comprehensive interviewer-based diagnostic interview (among other measures) and followed longitudinally to age 6. As the authors point out, unique features of the study design included the community-based sampling and the use of a rigorous and comprehensive diagnostic interview designed specifically to assess discrete disorders in preschoolers (as opposed to more commonly used generic checklist measures).
The study findings clearly demonstrated that the manifestation of symptoms meeting DSM-IV criteria for clinical disorders at age 3 was a robust marker of risk for disorders at age 6. Both homotypic and heterotypic continuity were demonstrated. Notably, having a disorder at age 3 was associated with an almost fivefold greater risk of having a disorder at age 6. Conversely, more than 50% of children who met criteria for a disorder at age 6 already had clinically significant symptoms by age 3. One limitation of the study was that the age 6 assessment was done by telephone rather than in person as was done at the age 3 assessment. Another was that the diagnosis was based on parental report and was not supplemented by observational data, thereby introducing possible bias that cannot be offset by child report (since young children have a limited ability to self-report on symptoms directly). It should be noted, however, that the use of parent informants in research diagnostic assessments of young children stands as the state of the art today, despite some promising efforts to develop feasible valid and reliable observational tools that map onto diagnostic algorithms (6). Notwithstanding these limitations, the study findings clearly add broad evidence supporting the relative stability, rather than transience, of early forms of psychopathology and therefore the importance of early identification and intervention.
Studies of childhood development have increasingly validated and elucidated two central principles over the past several decades. One is that infants and young children are far more cognitively and emotionally competent than previously assumed. The other is that the early developmental trajectory is steep in numerous domains, including emotional and behavioral, and is characterized by relatively high neuroplasticity (7, 8). This body of work in combination with the findings presented here by Bufferd et al. underscore the critical public health opportunity afforded by the identification of mental disorders in early childhood. Intervention studies from a wide variety of disciplines and domains now suggest that earlier intervention may have more powerful effects than later interventions. A large body of literature demonstrating this effect in early childhood disruptive disorders has been available for several decades (9), and a growing body of work suggests a similar effect in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders (10). This principle has long been central to the treatment of general developmental disorders in childhood, such as speech and language disorders and motor disorders.
The field of psychiatry, facing the need to develop more powerful and effective treatments, has been searching for new models to conceptualize disorders and to understand mechanisms of risk (11). Along this line, there has been an increasing focus on understanding the developmental underpinnings of disorders so that they may be identified before they are full-blown and, in some cases, on the path to chronicity. In this light, the findings of Bufferd et al. should blow new wind into the sails of efforts to identify and define the earliest-onset forms of mental disorders. Such work may help us understand the developmental pathways of adult disorders and develop new methods for intervening earlier in life, during periods of greater developmental change and plasticity.

References

1.
Bufferd SJ, Dougherty LR, Carlson GA, Rose S, Klein DN: Psychiatric disorders in preschoolers: continuity from ages 3 to 6. Am J Psychiatry 2012; 169:1157–1164
2.
Egger HL, Angold A: Common emotional and behavioral disorders in preschool children: presentation, nosology, and epidemiology. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 2006; 47:313–337
3.
Luby JL, Si X, Belden AC, Tandon M, Spitznagel E: Preschool depression: homotypic continuity and course over 24 months. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2009; 66:897–905
4.
Wichstrøm L, Berg-Nielsen TS, Angold A, Egger HL, Solheim E, Sveen TH: Prevalence of psychiatric disorders in preschoolers. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 2012; 53:695–705
5.
Lavigne JV, Lebailly SA, Hopkins J, Gouze KR, Binns HJ: The prevalence of ADHD, ODD, depression, and anxiety in a community sample of 4-year-olds. J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol 2009; 38:315–328
6.
Wakschlag LS, Briggs-Gowan MJ, Hill C, Danis B, Leventhal BL, Keenan K, Egger HL, Cicchetti D, Burns J, Carter AS: Observational assessment of preschool disruptive behavior, part II: validity of the Disruptive Behavior Diagnostic Observation Schedule (DB-DOS). J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2008; 47:632–641
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Johnson MH: Sensitive periods in functional brain development: problems and prospects. Dev Psychobiol 2005; 46:287–292
8.
Black JE, Jones TA, Nelson CA, Greenough WT: Neuronal plasticity and the developing brain, in Handbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, vol 6, Basic Psychiatric Science and Treatment. Edited by, Noshpitz JD, Alessi NE, Coyle JT, Harrison SI, Eth S. New York, Wiley, 1998, pp 31–53
9.
Thomas R, Zimmer-Gembeck MJ: Behavioral outcomes of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy and Triple P–Positive Parenting Program: a review and meta-analysis. J Abnorm Child Psychol 2007; 35:475–495
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Warren Z, McPheeters ML, Sathe N, Foss-Feig JH, Glasser A, Veenstra-Vanderweele J: A systematic review of early intensive intervention for autism spectrum disorders. Pediatrics 2011; 127:e1303–e1311
11.
Insel T, Cuthbert B, Garvey M, Heinssen R, Pine DS, Quinn K, Sanislow C, Wang P: Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): toward a new classification framework for research on mental disorders. Am J Psychiatry 2010; 167:748–751

Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Go to American Journal of Psychiatry
Go to American Journal of Psychiatry
American Journal of Psychiatry
Pages: 1127 - 1129
PubMed: 23128916

History

Accepted: August 2012
Published online: 1 November 2012
Published in print: November 2012

Authors

Details

Joan L. Luby, M.D.
From the Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.

Notes

Address correspondence to Dr. Luby ([email protected]).

Funding Information

Dr. Luby has received funding from the CHADS Coalition, NARSAD, NIMH, and the Sidney R. Baer Foundation. Dr. Freedman has reviewed this editorial and found no evidence of influence from these relationships.

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