Parent-adolescent agreement on emotional and behavioral problems

Background: The aim of the study is to report parent/youth self-report agre ement on emotional and behavioral symptoms among 15- to 16-year-old adolesc ents, Methods: A completed Child Behavior Checklist and Youth Self-Report w ere obtained from 580 subjects. Results: Adolescents reported significantly more problem behaviors than their parents, Adolescent girls reported a sig nificantly higher level of distress than boys in most symptom domains. The discrepancies between parent reports and youth self-reports were greater, e specially for internalizing symptoms, for girls than for boys. Conclusions: Many adolescents in need of psychiatric assessment do not receive appropri ate help because their problems remain unnoticed by adults. Internalizing p roblems among girls seem especially likely to remain unrecognized by adults .