Antisocial Disorders in Adolescence and Youth, According to Structural, Emotional, and Cognitive Transdiagnostic Variables: A Systematic Review

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Apr 27;17(9):3036. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17093036.

Abstract

Transdiagnostic causal variables have been identified that have allowed understanding the origin and maintenance of psychopathologies in parsimonious explanatory models of antisocial disorders. However, it is necessary to systematize the information published in the last decade. The aim of the study was to identify through a systematic review, the structural, emotional and cognitive transdiagnostic variables in antisocial disorders of adolescence and youth. Recommendations for systematic reviews and meta-extraction and analysis of information according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), the Cochrane Collaboration and Campbell were followed. We found 19 articles from 110 reviewed documents. The results indicated that at a structural level there is a general psychopathological factor (psychopathy or externalizing), non-emotional callousness and impulsivity from behavioral inhibition and activation systems, and negative affect traits as base structures. In the emotional level, the study found a risk component from emotional dysregulation and experiential avoidance. In the cognitive level, a key role of anger-rumination and violent ideation as explanatory variables of antisocial disorders. We concluded that the interaction of these identified variables makes it possible to generate an evidence-based transdiagnostic model.

Keywords: antisocial; criminal behavior; externalizing; juvenile delinquency; social deviance; transdiagnostic.

Publication types

  • Systematic Review

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Anger
  • Antisocial Personality Disorder*
  • Child
  • Cognition*
  • Emotions*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Quality of Life*
  • Young Adult