N. Garnefski et Rfw. Diekstra, COMORBIDITY OF BEHAVIORAL, EMOTIONAL, AND COGNITIVE PROBLEMS IN ADOLESCENCE, Journal of youth and adolescence, 26(3), 1997, pp. 321-338
The purpose of this study was to examine in a sample of 11,516 seconda
ry school students the extent to which different behavioral, emotional
and cognitive problems (a) reflected one or more underlying common fa
ctors; (b) ''actually'' cooccurred; and (c) were ''single'' problems,
Principal Component Analyses were performed and percentagewise techniq
ues were used. PCA demonstrated that one or more ''general syndromes''
could not by far account for all of the variance of the variables, Th
e results suggest the existence of adolescent ''subgroups'' with diver
gent comorbidity patterns: those who primarily report one ''single'' s
ymptom; those who report concurrent symptoms either exclusively in the
category of behavioral problems or exclusively in the category of emo
tional and cognitive problems; and those who report concurrent symptom
s in both categories. This distinction between different subgroups has
important theoretical, diagnostic, and treatment implications.