Grant: Operating Grant

Childhood Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) affects between 5 and 15% of school-aged children, including the majority of children referred to mental health centres. However, many children do not respond to first-line psychosocial treatments and current approaches to predict treatment response are inadequate. The lack of substantial treatment effects may result from a mismatch between the specific therapeutic components of a given treatment and some children's psychological characteristics. This study will test whether categorizing children into subgroups based on their profiles of psychological characteristics can improve our ability to predict which children are most likely to benefit from treatment. First, we will identify distinct profiles of clinic-referred children with ODD aged 6-12 years. Profiles will be based on combinations of key psychological and neuropsychological characteristics. Second, we will test whether these profiles improve our ability to predict which children with ODD are most likely to benefit from best-practice psychosocial treatment, after accounting for other important aspects of social and family functioning, medication effects and age. This innovative project will establish a personalized approach to intervention for children with ODD and address the important question of "Which treatments work for whom?"