Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2001 Course, Co-Occurrence, and Longitudinal Associations of Emotional Disturbance and Delinquency From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A Six-Year Three-Wave Study Geertjan Overbeek, 1 Wilma Vollebergh, 2 Wim Meeus, 3 Rutger Engels, 4 and Eric Luijpers 5 Received March 27, 2000; accepted March 28, 2001 Three questions were examined in this study: (a) What is the course of emotional disturbance and delinquency during adolescence and young adulthood? (b) To what extent do emotional disturbance and delinquency co-occur during adoles- cence and young adulthood? and (c) What are the longitudinal associations be- tween emotional disturbance and delinquency in different age and gender cate- gories during adolescence and young adulthood? Data were used from a national sample of 1,302 adolescents and young adults, who participated in a 6-year 3-wave longitudinal study. Findings showed an increase of emotional disturbance and delinquency from early to midadolescence, after which emotional disturbance sta- bilized and delinquency declined into young adulthood. A significant but relatively weak co-occurrence of emotional disturbance and delinquency was found. Multi- group LISREL analyses demonstrated that a stability model with no cross-lagged relations fit best for the total sample, and across age and gender categories. Thus, co-occurrence of emotional disturbance and delinquency during adolescence and young adulthood seems to result from associated but separate psychopathological 1 Professionally trained in Youth Studies, currently PhD student, Department of Child and Adolescent Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Main interests include developmental processes between internalizing and externalizing problems during adolescence and young adulthood. To whom corre- spondence should be addressed at Department of Child and Adolescent Studies, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands; e-mail: g.j.overbeek@fss.uu.nl. 2 Head, Research program, Psychiatric Epidemiology, Trimbos Institute, The Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction and Professor in cross-cultural education, Katholic University, Nigmegen (KUN). 3 Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. 4 Assistant Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. 5 Senior Researcher, The Netherlands Institute of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Utrecht, The Netherlands. 401 0047-2891/01/0800-0401$19.50/0 C  2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation