Early detection of and intervention in children with behavioural problems: The need for a targeted transdiagnostic approach

Antisocial behaviour committed by youngsters is an issue of concern. Although most research focuses on identifying specific contextual or social factors that affect the developing child, there is a growing consensus that individual, child-specific factors contribute importantly to the development and persistence of serious antisocial behaviour. We (van Goozen, Langley & Hobson, 2022, Annual Review of Psychology) have shown that children with conduct problems and juvenile offenders have problems in emotional functioning, which helps to explain why they experience difficulties in regulating behaviour and make poor decisions.

Existing interventions designed to tackle antisocial behaviour are limited in effectiveness and – in most cases – delivered too late in the individual’s developmental trajectory. Interventions are likely to be more successful if they were offered in a preventative way and targeted individual correlates of problem behaviour.

I will argue that we need to use a transdiagnostic research approach that involves deep phenotyping and developmental profiling to transform our understanding of the emotional, cognitive and behavioural problems in children to pave the way for prevention, early detection, and more effective intervention.