The Global Prevalence of Conduct Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective: there has been little effort to conduct systematic reviews or meta-analyses of the available literature to find global prevalence rates of conduct disorder and analyze the sources of heterogeneity. method: we searched multiple databases, including web of science, pubmed, scopus, and google scholar to identify cross-sectional studies with random or nonrandom sampling to assess the global prevalence of conduct disorder in children and adolescents aged under 18 in the general or school-based populations. quality assessment and data extraction were independently carried out by two authors. subgroup analysis was used to find the potential sources of heterogeneity. results: we reached 50 studies, incorporating 186,056 children and adolescents from 35 countries. the total prevalence of conduct disorder was 8% (ci: 7-9%; i2: 99.77%), including 7% in females (ci: 4-9%; i2: 99.56%) and 11% in males (ci: 7-15%; i2: 99.74%). the results of subgroup analysis showed that total heterogeneity could be explained by measurement tools. when diagnostic interviews such as the kiddie schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia for school-age children—present and lifetime version (k-sads-pl) and development and well-being assessment (dawba) were employed, the pooled prevalence rates for conduct disorder were 0.4% and 0.7%, respectively, and heterogeneity decreased. however, the use of the screening tools such as the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (sdq)-parent or teacher report and sdq-self report increased the pooled prevalence of conduct disorder to 10% and 16% respectively. conclusion: the prevalence of conduct disorder in the epidemiological studies should be estimated by employing the diagnostic interviews to reach accurately assessments.