European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

ASH1L potentially contributes to Tourette syndrome (TS) and other neuropsychiatric disorders, as our previous studies have shown. It regulates essential developmental genes by counteracting polycomb-mediated transcriptional repression, which restricts chromatin accessibility at target genes. ASH1L is highly expressed in the adult brain, playing a crucial role in the early stage. However, it remains unclear how ASH1L mutations carried by patients with TS participate in regulating neuronal growth processes leading to TS traits...

Given diverse symptom expression and high rates of comorbid conditions, the present study explored underlying commonalities among OCD-affected children and adolescents to better conceptualize disorder presentation and associated features. Data from 830 OCD-affected participants presenting to OCD specialty centers was aggregated. Dependent mixture modeling was used to examine latent clusters based on their age- and gender adjusted symptom severity (as measured by the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale; CY-BOCS), symptom type (as measured by factor scores calculated from the CY-BOCS symptom checklist), and comorbid diagnoses (as assessed via diagnostic interviews)...

There are over 40 million displaced children and youth worldwide and there is a need promote their mental wellbeing. This study aimed to synthesize evidence regarding promotion interventions to increase wellbeing, resilience, and quality of life (primary outcomes), and prevention interventions to reduce internalizing and externalizing symptoms (secondary outcomes) in this population. The review protocol was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42022329978). Medline, PsycINFO, and Web of Science were searched. Inclusion criteria were: ≥ 10 participants, sample ≤ 18 years of age, no parental participation, explicated forced migrant populations, implementation in non-clinical context, and validated measures...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Behavioural Activation (BA)-a brief therapy based on the scheduling of enjoyable, purposeful and rewarding activities-is an effective and cost-effective treatment for depression in adults that shows promise for children and adolescents. We provide an update on a previous systematic review of evidence on BA-delivered in-person, telephone, or online-for depression and comorbid anxiety in children and adolescents. We conducted systematic literature searches in 6 databases up to February 2024. We included all study designs evaluating BA with participants up to 18 years old with diagnosable depression, as established by a validated screening tool or diagnostic manual...

Over 50% of children with a parent with severe mental illness will develop mental illness by early adulthood. However, intergenerational transmission of risk for mental illness in one's children is insufficiently considered in clinical practice, nor is it sufficiently utilised into diagnostics and care for children of ill parents. This leads to delays in diagnosing young offspring and missed opportunities for protective actions and resilience strengthening. Prior twin, family, and adoption studies suggest that the aetiology of mental illness is governed by a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors, potentially mediated by changes in epigenetic programming and brain development...

This study aimed to investigate agreement and discrepancies between parent proxy- and adolescent self-reports on assessments of adolescents' health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and the role that individual factors may play in parent-adolescent agreement, in a sample of adolescents with Tourette syndrome (TS) compared to a control group of healthy adolescents. Adolescents aged 12-18 years diagnosed with TS were recruited with their parents from primary and secondary referral centres. Adolescent healthy controls were matched for gender and age...

Antipsychotic prescribing trends vary internationally, albeit off-label use remains high (i.e., target symptoms). We aim to describe antipsychotic use, target conditions, target symptoms and dosing regimens in children and adolescents in Ireland. We used a sampled cohort from a national audit of children and adolescents attending mental health services with predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria from Jul-2021 to Dec-2021 who were prescribed at least one psychotropic medication and up to and including 17-years of age (n = 3528)...

School refusal (SR) is a form of school attendance problem (SAP) that requires specific mental health care. Despite improvements in the definition of SAPs, the course of SR is not well characterized. To explore three-year patterns of SR course in children, as reported by their parents, we deployed an anonymous web-based survey. We defined SR onset as the absence of ≥ 2 school weeks during one academic year, combined with emotional distress. We defined standard SR trajectories using sequence analysis of parents' recollection of three consecutive years of school attendance...

The link between inflammatory disorders, such as asthma, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is attracting increasing attention but few studies have examined cross-generational associations. We sought to examine associations of maternal asthma and asthma exacerbation during pregnancy, as well as paternal asthma, with the risk of ADHD in children. This population-based cohort study used data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database from 2004 to 2017. Cox regression models compared the risk of ADHD in children of parents with and without asthma, adjusting for parental sociodemographic, physical, and mental health conditions, as well as the child's birth weight, and number of births...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Several studies show great heterogeneity in the type of genetic test requested and in the clinicopathological characteristics of patients with ASD. The following study aims, firstly, to explore the factors that might influence professionals' decisions about the appropriateness of requesting genetic testing for their patients with ASD and, secondly, to determine the prevalence of genetic alterations in a representative sample of children with a diagnosis of ASD. Methods: We studied the clinical factors associated with the request for genetic testing in a sample of 440 children with ASD and the clinical factors of present genetic alterations...

In recent decades, increases in mental health problems in adolescents have been reported from several large population-based surveys. This raises questions about changes in underlying risk and protective factors that can inform future intervention strategies. Population data were collected from 1995 to 2019 in three waves of the Young-HUNT studies in Norway to map decennial trends in the prevalence of established risk factors for, and their associations with, adolescent mental health problems. All adolescents (aged 13-19 years) attending lower and upper secondary school in the county of Trøndelag were invited, representing three historical cohorts of 25,245 unique adolescents...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Tics can have a serious impact on the quality of life of children and their families. Behavioural therapy is an evidence-based first line treatment for tic disorders. This randomised controlled trial studied the efficacy of a brief, condensed group-based programme for children with tics (Dutch Trial Registry NL8052, 27 September 2019). Tackle your Tics is a four-day group treatment, including exposure and response prevention and supporting components, delivered by therapists and 'experts by experience'. We collected outcome measures at baseline (T1), directly post-treatment (T2), and at three- and 6-months follow-up (T3, T4) including tic severity (primary outcome measure), tic-related impairment, quality of life, tic-related cognitions, emotional/behavioural functioning, family functioning, treatment satisfaction and adherence...

Mental health of migrant adolescents is a topic that has been widely studied in the past decades. Emotional and behavioural problems are amongst the most explored areas; however, little attention has been paid to the relational sphere, which represents another key aspect of mental health and is paramount during adolescence. This systematic review analysed the available evidence on emotional and relational problems comparing adolescents with and without a migrant background in Europe between 2010 and 2021. The search was conducted in four databases using a common search strategy composed of terms addressing adolescence, migrant population, and emotional and relational problems...

In this review, we analyzed the possible relationship between the excessive use of screens and sleep patterns, and how this may affect certain behavioral and cognitive factors in preschool children. The selection, extraction and synthesis of the data were conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. The search was carried out in the electronic databases Medline (PubMed), PsycINFO (American Psychological Association), Scopus and Web of Science (WOS). Of the 597 articles initially identified, 13 met the inclusion criteria...

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Initiative (CAMHI) aims to enhance mental health care capacity for children and adolescents across Greece. Considering the need for evidence-based policy, the program developed an open-resource dataset for researching the field within the country. A comprehensive, mixed-method, community-based research was conducted in 2022/2023 assessing the current state, needs, barriers, and opportunities according to multiple viewpoints. We surveyed geographically distributed samples of 1,756 caregivers, 1,201 children/adolescents, 404 schoolteachers, and 475 health professionals using validated instruments to assess mental health symptoms, mental health needs, literacy and stigma, service use and access, professional practices, training background, and training needs and preferences...

The present study aimed to examine the association between the presence, number, and type of positive psychotic symptoms (PPS) and clinical severity in adolescent patients. Five hundred-six patients aged 11-17 years were assigned to either the noPPS (n = 341), the delusional beliefs only (del; n = 32), the hallucinations only (hall; n = 80), or the delusional beliefs and hallucinations (del&hall; n = 53) group. Generalized Structural Equation Modeling was applied to identify the best-fitting model representing clinical severity indicated by psychiatric diagnoses, depressivity, personality pathology, non-suicidal self-injury, suicide attempts, perceived stress, and psychosocial impairments, assessed by interviews and questionnaires...

Although several studies have examined a diagnostic conversion from major depressive disorder (MDD) to bipolar disorder (BD), only a few studies specifically focused on adolescents and young adults who are at the peak ages of BD onset. Data from participants (N = 130,793) aged 10-29 years who were diagnosed with MDD were extracted from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. We applied demographic analyses, survival analysis, Aalen Johansen curves, and Cox regression, investigating the diagnostic conversion rate and factors that were most or less predictive of conversion...