Developmental Pathways and Accumulation of Risk During Adolescence

A newly published  article in The Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, entitled The Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS): Design, Current Status, and Selected Findings by Ormel, Oldehinkel, Sijtsema, van Oort, Raven, Veenstra, Vollebergh, and Verhulst presents recent findings from the prospective longitudinal project, which began in 2001. The project involves data collected from 2,230 population-based youths who began the study as early adolescents, and 543 clinically referred youths in the North of the Netherlands. In this article the authors report results from a linear mixed model analysis suggesting divergent developmental pathways across various dimensions of  broad-based internalizing and externalizing problem behavior by gender, age, and type of psychopathology. Specifically, the authors emphasize an accumulation of risk in the development of rule-breaking behavior among adolescents.