Page 38 - Age of onset of disruptive behavior of residentially treated adolescents -Sjoukje de Boer

attention should be paid to children that show signs of disruptive behavior at this early age. Although epidemiological researchers labeled this group as life-course-persistent, ergo untreatable (Moffitt, 2003; Moffitt & Caspi, 2001; Moffitt et al., 2002), they can profit from early interventions. Children with untreated behavioral problems are more likely to drop out from school, engage in delinquent activities, drug and alcohol abuse and unemployment (Lochman & Salekin, 2003; Odgers et al., 2008).
Recently the storage of information of the youth health care files in The Netherlands has been improved. Digitized storage will hopefully lead to more accurate and traceable information, so in the future more clarity about the differentiation of adolescent residential inpatients in life-course-persistent and adolescence-limited groups can be reached and the treatment programs for these groups can be further specialized.
Limitations
This study has several limitations. First, although the results of the inpatient group compared to the control group are convincing, the number of inpatient files that could be included in the study is rather small. The second limitation of this study is that, although we know from a large minority of inpatients that they showed signs of disruptive behavior at a young age, no information is available of the development of these children at a later primary school age or during early adolescence.
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