Research article summary (published 30 Jul 2004):

Psychopathy and comorbidity in a young offender sample: taking a closer look at psychopathy's potential importance over disruptive behavior disorders.

Full Abstract

The authors examined the construct of psychopathy as applied to 130 adolescent offenders using 3 psychopathy measures and a broad range of DSM-TV Axis I diagnoses and psychosocial problems. Measures used in the study included the following: (a) Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version, (b) Antisocial Process Screening Device, (c) a modified version of the Self-Report Psychopathy-II scale, and (d) the Adolescent Psychopathology Scale. Results from this study offer incremental support for the construct validity of psychopathy in youth. Psychopathy evidenced better convergent and discriminant validity results than did the disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) such as oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). Despite this finding, psychopathy scales nonetheless correlated with other forms of psychopathology at a higher rate than was expected, suggesting that comorbidity is high even when psychopathy is used as a classification scheme. Also, hierarchical multiple regression was used to determine whether psychopathy offered an improvement in the prediction of previous violent and nonviolent offenses. The results for the current study were mixed, with only the PCL-YV significantly predicting previous violent and nonviolent offenses beyond the DBDs. The findings indicate that psychopathy may offer incremental improvement over DBDs with regard to level of comorbidity and perhaps even prediction. However, simply extending the adult construct of psychopathy to youth without considering the array of psychopathology that may accompany adolescent psychopathy could be misleading.

Author information

Author/s: Salekin, Randall T (RT); Leistico, Anne-Marie R (AM); Neumann, Craig S (CS); DiCicco, Tina M (TM); Duros, Rachel L (RL);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA. rsalekin(-atsign-)bama.ua.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of abnormal psychology (J Abnorm Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2004-Aug; vol 113 (issue 3) : pp 416-27

Dates: Created 2004/08/17; Completed 2004/09/30; Revised 2009/11/11;

PMID: 15311987, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/11/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent Antisocial Personality Disorder - diagnosis; epidemiology; psychology Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders - diagnosis; epidemiology; psychology Child Comorbidity Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Female

Humans Juvenile Delinquency - psychology; statistics & numerical data Male Personality Inventory - statistics & numerical data Psychometrics - statistics & numerical data Regression Analysis Statistics as Topic

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