This is a longitudinal investigation over five years of two samples of Manhattan families and their children, one a random sample (N equals 1034) and the other a Welfare sample (N equals 1000) selected randomly from four Welfare centers. The study objective is to specify the relations between environmental stresses and behavioral disorders in urban children. The study has determined the incidence of serious psychological disturbance and the spontaneous recovery rate over the five-year period and will examine the extent to which treatment, social and familial changes account for such impairment changes. Nine of sixteen disturbed behaviors were significantly predicted over time. The social and familial variables with greatest long-term predictive power were ethnicity and punitiveness respectively. Differences between stresses' concurrent and long-term predictive power are being investigated by analyzing changes in stress variabless as predictors of changes in disturbed behaviors. Comparisons of matched children's and mothers' behavioral reports indicated that mothers did not over-report disturbance but respondents showed low levels of agreement. Agreement is being further examined by various respondent characteristics. In progress is an investigation of the impact on impairment of stressful life events relative to continuous stressful processes. The prediction of school performance from behavioral and stress dimensions is also in progress. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Gersten, J.C., Langner, T. S., Eisenberg J. G. and Simcha-Fagan, O. "Spontaneous recovery and incidence of psychological disorder in urban children and adolescents." Psychiatry Digest, 1975; Eisenberg, J. G., Langner, T. S. and Gersten, J.C. "Differences in the behavior of welfare and non-welfare children in relation to parental characteristics." Journal of Community Psychology (Monograph supplement), 1975.