Page 46 - Age of onset of disruptive behavior of residentially treated adolescents -Sjoukje de Boer

Method
Setting
The present study was conducted at De Fjord, an orthopsychiatric and forensic youth treatment facility in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In The Netherlands, the term orthopsychiatry entails specialized treatment of youngsters diagnosed with severe disruptive behavior (that may or may not include offending) in combination with one or more psychiatric disorders. De Fjord offers outpatient and day treatment, and a specialized residential treatment program. Patients are eligible for treatment if they are referred by other specialized youth care institutions, i.e., institutions that are predominantly focused on developmental, psychiatric or criminal problems in children and adolescents. In addition to referral, patients must meet the following inclusion criteria: age between 16 and 20 years, presence of severe behavioral as well as psychiatric problems, and (a history of) previous treatment. These criteria result in a patient sample with severe and complex problems that were not resolved by treatments elsewhere. Patients functioning below borderline intellectual level (IQ <70), with predominant addiction problems, or with severe recidivist criminal conduct for which specialized, individual forensic treatment is indicated, are not eligible for treatment.
Procedure
All patients admitted between 1995 and 2008 were included in the study. After a verbal description of the study to the subjects, written informed consent was obtained. All patients (N=223) agreed to participate. When patients were under age 16, in accordance with the statutory requirement in the Netherlands, informed consent was also obtained from the parents. The statistical analyses in present study were performed for 203 patients for whom the age of onset was determined (91.0% of the sample).
Disruptive behavior during childhood, its age of onset, and other childhood characteristics were obtained by using multi-informant (adolescent, parent and therapist), multi-method (self-report, interview, records from mental health care institutions where patients had previously been treated) information. The adolescent was interviewed by the researcher, and the therapist reported all known
44