The Affective Side of Disruptive Behavior: Toward Better Understanding, Assessment, and Treatment

ABSTRACT

Historically, much of the progress made in youth mental health research can be classified as focusing on externalizing problems, characterized by disruptive behavior (e.g. aggression, defiance), or internalizing problems, characterized by intense negative affect (e.g. depression, anxiety). Until recently, however, less attention has been given to topics that lie somewhere in between these domains, topics that we collectively refer to as the affective side of disruptive behavior. Like the far side of the moon, the affective side of disruptive behavior captures facets of the phenomenon that may be less obvious or commonly overlooked, but are nonetheless critical to understand. This affective side clarifies socially disruptive aspects of traditionally “externalizing” behavior by elucidating proximal causation via intense negative affect (traditionally “internalizing”). Such problems include irritability, frustration, anger, temper loss, emotional outbursts, and reactive aggression. Given a recent explosion of research in these areas, efforts toward integration are now needed. This special issue was developed to help address this need. Beyond the present introductory article, this collection includes 4 empirical articles on developmental psychopathology topics, 4 empirical articles on applied treatment/assessment topics, 1 evidence base update review article on measurement, and 2 future directions review articles concerning outbursts, mood, dispositions, and youth psychopathology more broadly. By deliberatively investigating the affective side of disruptive behavior, we hope these articles will help bring about better understanding, assessment, and treatment of these challenging problems, for the benefit of youth and families.

Acknowledgments

We thank the researchers who contributed their time and efforts to the special issue as authors and reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

This is a review paper that has no data associated with it.

Notes

¹ Throughout this paper, we generally use the terms “disruptive behavior” and “externalizing” interchangeably, although different connotations and contexts are explored (e.g., their relations to “emotional” and “internalizing,” respectively). See Table 1 for corresponding broadband distinctions that have been used over the years.

² While disruptive behavior disorders are amongst the most prevalent disorders in clinic populations, it is also the case that most individuals with these disorders never engage in treatment. While these features demand attention, prevailing beliefs and expectations about them may negative influence identification, referral and treatment-seeking.

³ The example of externalizing problems being misconstrued as masked depression in youth parallels the more recent example of chronic irritability being misconstrued by some clinicians as pediatric bipolar disorder, an occurrence that contributed to the acceleration of research on youth irritability generally (Leibenluft, 2011).

Additional information

Funding

This project was not specifically associated with any source of funding.