i.e. at least 50% of the children with clinical levels of aggression also showed a co-occurrence of clinically relevant rule-breaking behaviour. Strong links between aggression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) [12] are often seen in the clinical presentation of ADHD [13], and it has been suggested that the strong association between ADHD and aggression may explain gender differences in clinical referral. For example, teachers rated boys with a DSM-based ADHD diagnosis as having higher levels of attention problems and aggression than girls with a similar ADHD diagnosis [14]. Aggression not only co-occurs with psychopathologies on the externalizing spectrum. Aggression also tends to co-occur with anxiety, and it has been proposed that anxiety needs to be given a central role in the treatment of aggression [15]. In more extreme cases, aggression was not found to co-occur solely with ADHD symptoms, such as attention problems, or anxiety but rather with both of these forms of psychopathology. This pattern of behavioural problems is referred to as the dysregulation profile [16–18], and has been described as a potential marker for severe childhood psychopathologies [19, 20].
