[Behavioral symptoms in preschool children at the time of school entrance from the perspective of parents--data regarding prevalence and risk factors in an epidemiological study].

Behavioral and emotional problems based on parents information from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) were investigated in a large epidemiological sample of 4363 six year old pre-school children from the area of Heidelberg and Rhein-Neckar county. An overview about symptom frequencies of boys and girls is given, taking age specific evaluations into account. Considering symptoms and syndromes, externalizing and attention problems show high prevalence, especially for boys. Family problems are the most important predictors of child global symptomatology, explaining about 10% of variance of the CBCL total score. Other factors like gender, chronical illness, adverse living conditions, family constellation or amount of TV consumption prove as additional independent predictors. An overall model explains about 20% of variance of child symptomatology. Results are discussed from the view of normal child development, developmental psychopathology, changing norms and altered socio-cultural conditions.