Abnormal psychosocial situations and ICD-10 diagnoses in children and adolescents attending a psychiatric service

Two recent WHO drafts for ICD-10 diagnoses and the assessment of abnormal psychosocial situations were used in a large cohort of patients attending a child and adolescent psychiatric service. In addition to revealing frequency distributions of psychosocial features, it was shown that a total score of abnormal psychosocial features was mainly dependent on socioeconomic status and was to a lesser extent dependent on age. Sex was not found to be significant. In addition, there was a significant association between IQ and some main categories of the list of psychosocial features. Among diagnoses, the strongest correlations with psychosocial conditions exist for conduct disorders and mixed disorders of conduct and emotions. A high symptom load is associated with higher frequencies of abnormal psychosocial situations.