Peer status and social competence in child psychiatric inpatients: a comparison of children with depressive, externalizing, and concurrent depressive and externalizing disorders

Abstract

Social competence, peer status, and clinical symptomatology were evaluated in 54 child psychiatric inpatients. Aims were (a) to evaluate whether social competence deficits and peer rejection within an inpatient setting were associated with particular childhood disorders, and (b) to identify predictors of peer status in emerging groups of child inpatients. Results indicated that children with externalizing disorders (conduct or attention deficit disorders) and children with concurrent depressive and externalizing disorders were the most rejected, least liked, and least socially competent children. Depressed children without externalizing disorders had the highest scores on the social status and competence measures. Predictors of peer rejection and acceptance in the hospital differed, with measures of symptomatology predicting peer rejection, and measures of social and intellectual competence predicting peer acceptance. Implications of the results for understanding the role of peer adjustment and social competence in developmental psychopathology were discussed.