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14-Year Changes in Emotional and Behavioral Problems of Very Young Dutch Children

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ABSTRACT

Objective

The societal changes experienced by Western societies in recent decades have raised concerns about increases in the level of children's mental health problems. Although studies of secular changes in the prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses have indeed shown increases, their results may have been influenced by methodological problems, such as changing diagnostic criteria. Although repeated population studies using identical measures have not indicated such a clear increase in mental health problems, these studies have been limited to school-age children. We therefore investigated changes in Dutch parents' reports of very young children's emotional and behavioral problems over a 14-year period.

Method

We compared Child Behavior Checklist scores across two Dutch general population samples of 2- and 3-year-olds, one sample assessed in 1989 and one in 2003.

Results

Results revealed only a few changes over time, indicating small decreases in parent-reported problems. Between 1989 and 2003, there were decreases in the mean scores and in the proportions of children with deviant scores on the Anxious/Depressed, Total Problems, Internalizing, and DSM-oriented attention-deficit/hyperactivity problems scales.

Conclusions

Despite indications of increasing problems among school-age children and adolescents, parent-reported problem levels of very young Dutch children have not increased. Our findings even showed some small improvements in parents' reports of very young children's functioning between 1989 and 2003.

Section snippets

1989 Sample.

For the 1989 sample, four hundred 2- to 3-year-olds were randomly drawn from the provincial inoculation register of the province of Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands. Because this register did not contain children from Rotterdam, sixty-nine 2- to 3-year-olds were also randomly drawn from the register of the Rotterdam municipal health service, which contains data on all children living in Rotterdam. Data collection took place between September 1989 and March 1990. Two children were excluded because

Prevalence of Psychopathology

To enable comparison of the prevalence of psychopathology among Dutch and American very young children, we have depicted in Table 2 the percentages of children scoring above the borderline cutoffs, which are based on the American norm sample for the CBCL/1½-5 (Achenbach and Rescorla, 2001). Because the CBCL used for the 1989 sample does not contain identical items to the questionnaire used for the American norm sample and for the 2003 sample, we have used raw scores, not T scores, for our

DISCUSSION

In this study we investigated the 14-year secular change in parent-reported emotional and behavioral problems of 2- and 3-year-olds in the Dutch population. Our findings indicate that the problem scores for preschoolers in 2003 were similar to those in 1989. A few small changes were found in scale scores, indicating lower parent-reported problem scores among 2003 very young children than among their 1989 counterparts. This was the case for Total Problems, Internalizing, Anxious/Depressed, and

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    This study was supported by grantSSWO 960 from theSophia Foundation of Medical Research.

    Disclosure: The authors have no financial relationships to disclose.

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