Age and time of onset of an emotional or behavioral disorder

• Relationship between age and the onset of specific problems:
  • deficiencies in attention are typically diagnosed before entering school or during early elementary school
  • fears and anxieties can occur any time during life (peaks in both early childhood and adulthood)
  • aggression, noncompliance, and stealing can occur at any time
  • depression, eating disorders (anorexia and bulemia), drug abuse, and schizophrenia first occur in adolescence or early adulthood.

Gender and an emotional or behavioral disorder

Relationship between gender and emotional and behavioral disorders

• boys are more at risk biologically
  • higher incidence of a variety of inherited disordes with the Y chromosome
  • psychosocial factors (socialized aggression and assertiveness) play a role in males being referred for services more often
• higher incidence in males may be a result of our data collection methods
  • boys are more frequently referred to treatment so clinic samples are biased
  • clinical samples are used to participate in research and, ultimately, to develop definitions. The resulting definition would have a bias towards identifying males.