Prevalence of DSM-IV disorder in a representative, healthy birth cohort at school entry: sociodemographic risks and social adaptation.

Objective: The aims of this paper are as follows: to present past-year prevalence data for DSM-IV disorders in the early elementary school years; to examine the impact of impairment criteria on prevalence estimates; to examine the relation of sociodemographic and psychosocial risk factors to disorders; and to explore associations between "internalizing" and "externalizing" disorders and social competence and family burden as further validation of the impairing nature of these disorders.

Method: As part of a longitudinal representative population study of children born healthy between July 1995 and September 1997 in the New Haven-Meriden Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area of the 1990 Census (n = 1,329), parents of a subsample enriched for child psychopathology (n = 442; 77.6% response rate, 69.