The sibling relationships of adolescents with antisocial and comorbid mental disorders: an epidemiological investigation

Abstract

AbstractA growing literature suggests that the sibling relationship provides one aetiologic context for the development of antisocial behaviour. This study adds to this body of work by examining associations between the quality of adolescent sibling relationships and antisocial behaviour in an epidemiological sample, and also by exploring whether such associations are conditional on the presentation of disorders comorbid with antisocial behaviour disorders. The sample consisted of 698 adolescents (at the average age of 16.2 years) participating in an epidemiological study of youth. Subjects completed a self‐report questionnaire on the quality of the sibling relationship, which yielded three correlated factors: negative, positive and competition. All subjects were assessed for psychiatric disorders using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. The primary focus was on 31 subjects who met ‘severe’ criteria for antisocial behaviour disorders (either conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder), and 46 subjects who met criteria for other psychiatric disorders. The antisocial adolescents reported significantly higher scores on the negative scale than the psychiatric control group. Furthermore, subjects with just antisocial disorders, as well as subjects with comorbid presentation of antisocial and other psychiatric disorders, had similar scores on the negative scale, which were elevated as compared with various psychiatric control groups. The results are consistent with theories which speculate that siblings influence the development of antisocial behaviour through direct training in coercive interaction. Furthermore, the analysis of comorbid presentation leads us to suggest that aversive sibling relationships may be specifically associated with antisocial behaviour disorders, rather than psychopathology in general. Copyright © 1997 Whurr Publishers Ltd.