Common and Unique Factors Associated with DSM-IV-TR Internalizing Disorders in Children Charmaine K. Higa-McMillan & Rita L. Smith & Bruce F. Chorpita & Kentaro Hayashi Published online: 8 July 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008 Abstract With the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders DSM-IV Fourth Edition-Text Revision. Author, Washington, DC. 2000) ahead, decisions will be made about the future of taxonomic conceptualizations. This study examined the factor structure of items from three internaliz- ing disorders (Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Depression) on the Anxiety Disorders Interview Sched- ule for DSM-IV-Child Version (Silverman, W. K., & Albano, A. M. Anxiety disorders interview schedule for children for DSM-IV, child and parent versions. Psychological Corpora- tion, San Antonio, 1996). Two-, three-, and four-factor models emerged in an exploratory factor analysis. Confir- matory factor analysis provided additional empirical support for the four-factor model over the two- or three-factor models. Implications for the structure of the DSM-V taxonomy in children and adolescents are discussed. Keywords Children . Adolescents . Internalizing disorders . Comorbidity . Tripartite model . DSM taxonomy As the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th Edition-Text Revision; DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association 2000) is being drafted, the current system of taxonomy is being reevaluated. Issues of taxono- my and the current gold standard for classifying disorders into discrete categories have been long-debated in the field (e.g., Widiger and Samuel 2005). At least two related problems exist with our current nosologies for anxiety and mood disorders—generally poor discriminant validity be- tween classifications and a significantly high rate of comorbidity. In child and adolescent clinic-referred samples anxiety and depression are often co-occurring, with rates ranging widely from 32% (Kovacs et al. 1989) to 62% (Masi et al. 1999). This high overlap of symptoms suggests that depression and anxiety disorders may not be separate entities and heterogeneous disorders, but rather underlying symp- toms common to many disorders (e.g., Brown et al. 1998). This high rate of co-occurring internalizing symptoms is supported by a recent investigation by van Lang et al. (2006). These authors investigated children with symptoms of anxiety and/or depression using latent class analysis and determined whether children with such symptoms could be categorized into homogeneous groups. Results on self- report measures from their sample showed that only very few individuals had only anxiety or depression, and almost all (99%) had comorbid symptoms. DSM-IV-TR Taxonomy and the Tripartite Model Much of the recent discussion on DSM-IV-TR categories has focused on adult populations with an increased interest J Abnorm Child Psychol (2008) 36:1279–1288 DOI 10.1007/s10802-008-9250-8 C. K. Higa-McMillan (*) : R. L. Smith : K. Hayashi Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2430 Campus Road, Gartley Hall 110, Honolulu, HI 96822-2294, USA e-mail: higac@hawaii.edu R. L. Smith e-mail: ritas@hawaii.edu K. Hayashi e-mail: hayashik@hawaii.edu B. F. Chorpita Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles, 1285 Franz Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA e-mail: chorpita@ucla.edu