Poor Self-Regulation in Young Children

Abstract

Child psychiatry continues to struggle how best to characterize children with severe psychopathology. It has long been recognized that a certain group of children has problems in multiple domains. These children show emotional problems, such as anxiety or depression, and behavioral problems, including hyperactivity, oppositional behavior or aggression. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorder (DSM) does not provide a diagnostic category that describes the wide range of problems from which these children suffer. Instead, these children are likely to meet criteria from multiple diagnoses. An adequate characterization of these severely disturbed children is needed to study the determinants and consequences of these problems. Several attempts have been performed to describe these children.