Child mental health problems as a risk factor for academic underachievement: A multi‐informant, population‐based study

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether child mental health problems prospectively associate with IQ‐achievement discrepancy (i.e., academic under‐ and over‐achievement) in emerging adolescence. The secondary aims were to test whether these associations are specific to certain mental health problems, to assess potential sex differences, and to examine whether associations are robustly observed across multiple informants (i.e., maternal and teacher‐reports). METHODS: This study included 1,577 children from the population‐based birth cohort the Generation R Study. Child mental health problems at age 6 were assessed by mothers and teachers using the Child Behavior Checklist and the Teacher's Report Form. The IQ‐achievement discrepancy was quantified as the standardized residuals of academic achievement regressed on IQ, where IQ was measured with four tasks from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children‐Fifth Edition around age 13 and academic attainment was measured with the Cito test, a national Dutch academic test, at the end of elementary school (12 years of age). RESULTS: Mental health problems at age 6 were associated with IQ‐achievement discrepancy at age 12, with more problems associating with greater academic underachievement. When examining specific mental health problems, we found that attention problems was the only mental health problem to independently associate with the IQ‐achievement discrepancy (adjusted standardized difference per 1‐standard deviation, mother: −0.11, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.16, −0.06]; teacher: −0.13, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.18, −0.08]). These associations remained after adjusting for co‐occurring mental health problems. The overall pattern of associations was consistent across boys and girls and across informants. CONCLUSION: Mental health problems during the transition from kindergarten to elementary school associate with academic underachievement at the end of elementary school. These associations were primarily driven by attention problems, as rated by both mothers and teachers—suggesting that strategies targeting attention problems may be a particularly promising avenue for improving educational performance irrespective of IQ, although this should be established more thoroughly through further research.