No abstract

Follow-up studies of adolescent depression and conduct disorder have pointed to homotypic continuity, but less information exists about outcomes beyond mental disorders and about the extent to which adolescents with different disorders experience different versus similar difficulties during the transition to adulthood. We assessed the continuity of adolescent disorder by following girls in a complete birth cohort who at age 15 were depressed (n = 27), conduct disordered (n = 37), or without a mental health disorder (n = 341) into young adulthood (age 21) to identify their outcomes in three domains: mental health and illegal behavior, human capital, and relationship and family formation. We found homotypic continuity; in general, depressed girls became depressed women and conduct disordered girls developed antisocial personality disorder symptoms by age 21. Conduct disorder exclusively predicted at age 21: antisocial personality disorder, substance dependence, illegal behavior, dependence on multiple welfare sources, early home leaving, multiple cohabitation partners, and physical partner violence. Depression exclusively predicted depression at age 21. Examples of equifinality (where alternate pathways lead to the same outcome) surfaced, as both adolescent disorders predicted at age 21: anxiety disorder, multiple drug use, early school leaving, low school attainment, any cohabitation, pregnancy, and early child bearing.

An interactive model of perfectionism, perceived weight status, and self-esteem was tested on 342 female undergraduates to predict bulimic symptoms. Using a longitudinal design, the authors tested the model on data collected at 2 points: the spring of participants' senior year of high school and during participants' first year of college. The authors hypothesized and found that self-esteem moderates the interaction between perfectionism and perceived weight status in predicting bulimic symptoms. Women who are high in perfectionism and who consider themselves overweight exhibit bulimic symptoms only if they have low self-esteem (i.e., if they doubt they can attain their high body standards). High self-esteem women with the same diathesis-stress conditions are less likely to exhibit bulimic symptoms. These findings clarify the role of perfectionism in bulimic symptomatology.Perfectionism long has been associated with eating disorders (e.g., Garner, Olmstead, & Polivy, 1983). Indeed, the very nature of eating disorders-relentlessly striving toward an impossible standard of thinness-is perfectionistic. Hence, it is not surprising that many researchers and theoreticians have hypothesized about the role of perfectionism in the development and maintenance of earing disorders link between perfectionism and disordered eating symptoms (especially bulimic symptoms) has remained correlational and atheoretical (cf. Joiner, Heatherton, et al., 1997). Furthermore, although there appears to be a link between perfectionistic standards and eating disorders, previous research has not focused on whether perfectionism predicts bulimic symptoms over time.