VCATTRC For Brain Enhancement and Psychological Services

These disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and phobia, involve distress in the emotional and cognitive domains. Self-destructive behaviors often emerge in just as likely to accompany behavioral (externalizing) problems as they are depressions and other internalizing problems (Steinberg, 2011).

Comorbidity can encompass the presence of both externalizing and internalizing disorders within the same individual. For example, many adolescents who engage in delinquent behavior are also depressed (Hinden, Compas, Howell, & Achenbach, 1997). The most common co-occurring diagnoses involve the presence of conduct disorders, mood disorders, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) (Grella, Hser, Joshi, & Rounds-Bryant, 2001).

“Acting out” behaviors such as truancy, aggression, and delinquency are directed outside of the self in the form of a wide range of behavioral disorders characterized by an antisocial orientation to others and society. Adolescent delinquency and crime, aggression, and other forms of disorderly conduct fall under the category of externalizing behaviors and are believed to derive from a general propensity toward antisocial behavior.

​Children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) display a pattern of negativity, defiance, and opposition that leads to problems with teachers, parents, siblings, and peers. They vehemently resist restrictions or (limits) on behavior despite the “reasonableness” of the request.

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