Suicidal behavior is highly familial. Neurocognitive deficits have been proposed as an endophenotype for suicide risk that may contribute to the familial transmission of suicide. Yet, there is a lack of research on the neurocognitive functioning of first‐degree biological relatives of suicide attempters. The aim of the present study is to conduct the largest investigation to date of neurocognitive

Children reared in institutions experience profound deprivation that is linked to impairments in social communication (SC). However, little is known about the long‐term consequences of institutional rearing on SC through adolescence, and how SC deficits relate to broad‐spectrum psychopathology. It is also unclear whether early removal from deprivation and placement into socially enriched environments

A recent genome‐wide association study identified molecular‐genetic associations with age‐at‐first‐birth. However, the meaning of these genetic discoveries is unclear. Drawing on evidence linking early pregnancy with disinhibitory behavior, we tested the hypothesis that genetic discoveries for age‐at‐first‐birth predict disinhibition.

Based on previous findings from the Wirral Child Health and Development Study (WCHADS), and on evolutionary hypotheses, we preregistered analyses of data from a large epidemiological sample (https://osf.io/fn5g9/register/564d31db8c5e4a7c9694b2be), to test for sex‐dependent moderation by prenatal maternal depressive symptoms of the association between postnatal maternal depressive symptoms and child

Peer victimization has been associated with long‐lasting risks for mental health. Prior research suggests that stress‐related systems underlying adaptation to changing environments may be at play. To date, inconsistent findings have been reported for the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, and its end product cortisol. This study tested whether peer victimization was associated with hair cortisol

Young people in out‐of‐home care are substantially more likely to meet criteria for PTSD than their peers, while their early maltreatment exposure may also place them at greater risk of developing the newly proposed complex PTSD. Yet, there remains limited empirical evidence for the mechanisms that might drive either PTSD or complex features in this group, and ongoing debate about the suitability of

Adolescence is characterized by substantial changes in sleep behavior, heightened exposure to stressful life events (SLEs), and elevated risk for internalizing problems like anxiety and depression. Although SLEs are consistently associated with the onset of internalizing psychopathology, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood, especially at the within‐person level. Here

Sleep is thought to be important for behavioral and cognitive development. However, much of the prior research on sleep's role in behavioral/cognitive development has relied upon self‐report measures and cross‐sectional designs.

Sensory symptoms are defined as atypical behavioral responses to daily sensory stimuli that impact on the performance of everyday routines. Sensory symptoms have been observed in young people with and without developmental concerns. There is uncertainty, however, regarding the best way to identify and manage sensory symptoms. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of current best evidence regarding

Suicidal thoughts and behavior can begin early in childhood and are a leading cause of death in youth. Although specific mechanisms of risk remain largely unknown, theorists and researchers highlight the importance of the parent–child relationship. The current study focused on one aspect of this relationship: the dynamic exchange of facial affect during interactions. Specifically, we examined the relation

Leaving infant to cry it out has been the subject of discussion among researchers and parents. Nevertheless, there is paucity of empirical research investigating the association between leaving infant to cry it out and consequent crying duration and frequency, mother–infant attachment and behavioural development.

Shortened sleep and affective disturbances are both prevalent in adolescents with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), yet the causal link between these domains has not been examined. This study investigated whether shortened sleep duration is causally linked to affective functioning in adolescents with ADHD.

Preschool ADHD symptoms have predictive utility for later presence of ADHD diagnoses (Harvey, Youngwirth, Thakar, & Errazuriz, 2009, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 77, 349; Lahey et al., 2004, American Journal of Psychiatry, 161(11), 2014), yet some level of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity are present even in typically developing preschoolers. Physical activity (PA) is known

Attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) frequently co‐occurs with other psychiatric disorders. Twin studies have established that these co‐occurrences are in part due to shared genetic risks. However, the strength of these genetic overlaps and the potential heterogeneity accounted for by type of psychiatric symptoms, age, and methods of assessment remain unclear. We conducted a systematic review

BACKGROUND A better understanding of the trajectories and economic burden of psychiatric and somatic disorders (multimorbidity) in ADHD from childhood to adulthood is important for guiding more targeted areas for treatment of ADHD and prevention of multimorbidity, and for forecasting demands on the medical infrastructure. This study aimed to investigate patterns of healthcare utilization and costs

BACKGROUND Social anxiety is common in autistic adolescents. While emerging evidence indicates the importance of several mechanisms (including intolerance of uncertainty (IU), alexithymia and sensory processing) for maintaining anxiety, limited research has explored how these factors are associated with social anxiety in autistic adolescents. METHODS We investigated whether IU, emotional and sensory

BACKGROUND Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with emotional problems, and their co-occurrence often leads to worse outcomes. We investigated the developmental associations between ADHD and emotional problems from childhood to early adolescence and examined the genetic and environmental contributions to their developmental link. We further tested whether this developmental

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has served as a methodological tool across subdisciplines in psychology, shedding light on family, personality, and affective processes, and physical and mental health. In their review, Russell and Gajos demonstrate how EMA can overcome several limitations of traditional methods in developmental psychopathology to answer questions about mental and behavioral health

Autism science has transformed beyond recognition in the last two decades. International investment has grown extensively and the number of papers published on autism has increased 10-fold (Pellicano et al., 2014), far surpassing publications on related topics. The sheer amount of scientific research on autism has no doubt been instrumental in many of the discoveries and insights so eloquently described

Odgers and Jensen's (Annual research review: Adolescent mental health in the digital age: Facts, fears, and future directions, Wiley-Blackwell, 2020) review compellingly suggests that a rapid increase in the number of hours adolescents now dedicate to digital media use over the past decade may not be associated with concomitant changes in the prevalence of adolescent mental health disorders. Yet, there

The start of a new decade is often the moment when people pause to reflect on what they have accomplished in the past 10-20 years and where they would like to be at the start of the next decade. Although not designed as such, the 2020 Annual Review issue engages in exactly this sort of a backwards and forwards look at the field of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychology. In doing so, it covers

BACKGROUND Given the role of childhood aggressive behavior (AGG) in everyday child development, precise and accurate measurement is critical in clinical practice and research. This study aims to quantify agreement among widely used measures of childhood AGG regarding item content, clinical concordance, correlation, and underlying genetic construct. METHODS We analyzed data from 1254 Dutch twin pairs

BACKGROUND Self-conscious emotional reactivity and its physiological marker - blushing has been proposed to be an etiological mechanism of social anxiety disorder (SAD), but so far, untested in longitudinal designs. This study tested, for the first time, whether self-conscious emotional reactivity (indexed as physiological blushing) contributes to the development of SAD symptoms over and above social

This editorial perspective comments on the evidence that mental health is deteriorating among children and young people at the same time as the impact of poor mental health is more impairing. It discusses the methodological difficulties in detecting a 'true' change in prevalence. There are particular gaps in the evidence from low- and middle-income countries and also in relation to autism spectrum

OBJECTIVE Restricted and repetitive pattern of behaviours and interests (RRB) are a cardinal feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but there remains uncertainty about how these diverse behaviours vary according to individual characteristics. This study provided the largest exploration to date of the relationship between Repetitive Motor Behaviours, Rigidity/Insistence on Sameness and Circumscribed

Nearly two in five youth with major depressive disorder fail to respond to first-line interventions. As such, treatment-resistant depression represents a formidable challenge for clinicians and researchers. In fact, even considering the diagnosis of treatment-resistant depression in children and adolescents requires (a) defining treatment-resistant depression and, by extension, treatment failure; (b)

BACKGROUND Using data from the English & Romanian Adoptees (ERA) study, we recently reported that early time-limited exposure to severe institutional deprivation is associated with early-onset and persistent neurodevelopmental problems and later-onset emotional problems. Here, we examine possible reasons for the late emergence of emotional problems in this cohort. Our main focus is on testing a developmental

BACKGROUND Top-down volitional command of eye movements may serve as a candidate endophenotype of ADHD, an important function underlying goal-directed action in everyday life. In this twin study, we examined the relation between performance on a response inhibition eye-tracking paradigm and parent-rated ADHD traits in a population-based twin sample. We hypothesized that altered eye movement control

Adolescent major depressive disorder (MDD) is a significant health problem, associated with substantial morbidity, cost, and mortality. Depression is a significant risk factor for suicide, which is now the second leading cause of death in young people. Up to twenty per cent of adolescents will experience MDD before adulthood, and while a substantial proportion will improve with standard‐of‐care treatments

BACKGROUND Cross-sectional associations have been documented between cybervictimization and suicidal risk; however, prospective associations remain unclear. METHODS Participants were members of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (QLSCD), a prospective birth cohort of 2,120 individuals followed from birth (1997/98) to age 17 years (2014/15). Cybervictimization and face-to-face victimization

BACKGROUND Recurrent depressive episodes during adolescence result in significant impairment and increased risk for subsequent adverse outcomes throughout the life span. Evidence suggests that early pubertal timing predicts the onset of depressive episodes (particularly for girls); however, it is not known if pubertal timing prospectively predicts recurrent depressive episodes in youth. METHODS At

The identification of child, family, and other environmental factors that confer risk for poor developmental outcomes has long been a major theme in child and adolescent psychopathology research. Over the past 6 decades, the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry has seen an exponential increase in articles that have included the search term 'risk prediction', with 17 such works appearing in the

BACKGROUND Difficulties with facial expression processing may be associated with the characteristic social impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Emotional face processing in ASD has been investigated in an abundance of behavioral and EEG studies, yielding, however, mixed and inconsistent results. METHODS We combined fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) with EEG to assess

BACKGROUND Enhancements in mobile phone technology allow the study of children and adolescents' everyday lives like never before. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) uses these advancements to allow in-depth measurements of links between context, behavior, and physiology in youths' everyday lives. FINDINGS A large and diverse literature now exists on using EMA to study mental and behavioral health

The concept of autism is a significant contribution from child psychiatry that has entered wider culture and public consciousness, and has evolved significantly over the last four decades. Taking a rather personal retrospective, reflecting on our own time in autism research, this review explores changes in the concept of autism and the implications of these for future research. We focus on seven major

BACKGROUND Autonomic hyperarousal has been proposed as a dispositional risk factor for anxiety disorders (ADs). Therefore, we studied physiological arousal in offspring of fathers and mothers with and without ADs and whether infant hyperarousal predicts subsequent fearful temperament. METHODS Infants (N = 128; age = 4 months) did a novel stimuli task (exposure to visual, olfactory, and acoustic stimuli

Despite significant advancements in our knowledge of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents, they continue to be underrecognised and undertreated. It is critical that these disorders are taken seriously in children and young people as they are highly prevalent, have a negative impact on educational, social and health functioning, create a risk of ongoing anxiety and other mental health disorders

BACKGROUND Autism Spectrum Disorder is highly heterogeneous, no more so than in the complex world of adult life. Being able to summarize that complexity and have some notion of the confidence with which we could predict outcome from childhood would be helpful for clinical practice and planning. METHODS Latent class profile analysis is applied to data from 123 participants from the Early Diagnosis Study

BACKGROUND Low educational attainment in parents is associated with child psychopathology. It is not clear whether the associations are due to risk factors that family members share or due to effects of maternal or paternal education on the offspring. We investigate whether associations between maternal and paternal educational attainment and child symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Adolescents are spending an increasing amount of their time online and connected to each other via digital technologies. Mobile device ownership and social media usage have reached unprecedented levels, and concerns have been raised that this constant connectivity is harming adolescents' mental health. This review synthesized data from three sources: (a) narrative reviews and meta-analyses conducted

BACKGROUND Anxiety sensitivity, the tendency to fear the symptoms of anxiety, is a key risk factor for the development anxiety disorders. Although obsessive-compulsive disorder was previously classified as an anxiety disorder, the prospective relationship between anxiety sensitivity and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) has been largely overlooked. Furthermore, a lack of genetically informative studies

BACKGROUND Aggression in children has genetic and environmental causes. Studies of aggression can pool existing datasets to include more complex models of social effects. Such analyses require large datasets with harmonized outcome measures. Here, we made use of a reference panel for phenotype data to harmonize multiple aggression measures in school-aged children to jointly analyze data from five large

Is the microbiome a promising adjunct, a potential panacea, or a distraction from feasible treatments for neurodevelopmental disorders? Taking a developmental approach may get us closer to understanding the data and give us pause in trying to translate this nascent field to the clinic right now.

BACKGROUND Adoption studies can cast light on environmental influences on development, but heterogeneity in preplacement experiences often complicates interpretation of findings. METHODS We studied infant-adopted samples drawn from the 1958 and 1970 British birth cohorts and examined mental health, well-being, physical health and externalizing outcomes at mid-life. Outcomes for adopted cohort members

BACKGROUND The longitudinal course of multiple symptom domains in adolescents treated for major depression is not known. Revealing the temporal course of general and specific psychopathology factors, including potential differences between psychotherapies, may aid therapeutic decision-making. METHODS Participants were adolescents with major depressive disorder (aged 11-17; 75% female; N = 465) who

Dodge (2020) provides a challenging and compelling formulation for more systematic determination of prevention component selection. The essay reminds us that population impact should be front and center in prevention specifically and public health organization in general. Dodge brings forth numerous issues in the science and the application of knowledge about prevention that warrant more research support

While there have been major advances in documenting the consequences of childhood adversities for psychopathology, Professor Danese's excellent paper challenges existing theory and research methods, urging the field to move ahead with future research that overcomes existing limitations. Importantly, he reminds us of the methodological caveats necessary to consider when assessing the body of evidence

BACKGROUND Social anxiety disorder (SAD) aggregates in families. To elucidate intergenerational transmission of risk, we examined whether childhood SAD and symptoms of anxiety were prospectively predicted by stable infant temperamental inhibition, maternal SAD, maternal generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and maternal parenting behaviours. METHODS We conducted a longitudinal study beginning prenatally

BACKGROUND Young children are at particular risk for injury. Ten per cent to twenty-five per cent develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, no empirically supported preventive interventions exist. Therefore, this study evaluated the efficacy of a standardised targeted preventive intervention for PTSD in young injured children. METHODS Injured children (1-6 years) were enrolled in a multi-site

This paper By Ward et al. (Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2019) in the issue of the JCPP, is an excellent example of preparing a new programme for parents with children at high risk of present and future behaviour problems. It was to be delivered in a very deprived population in a township in South Africa. We discuss the paper but also raise questions about developing new programmes when

BACKGROUND Risk for childhood psychopathology is complex and multifactorial, implicating direct and interacting effects of familial and environmental factors. The role of environmental neurotoxicants in psychiatric risk is of growing concern, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), common in air pollution. Prenatal PAH exposure is linked to adverse physical, behavioral, and cognitive outcomes

OBJECTIVE Callous-unemotional (CU) traits in early childhood explain heterogeneity within conduct problems and are associated with higher risk for later diagnoses of childhood disruptive behavior disorders and antisocial behavior in adulthood. Emerging research implicates impairments in affiliative processes in the etiology of CU traits. The current study tests whether the imitation of intentional

BACKGROUND Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective, first-line treatment for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While neural predictors of treatment outcomes have been identified in adults with OCD, robust predictors are lacking for pediatric patients. Herein, we sought to identify brain structural markers of CBT response in youth with OCD. METHODS Twenty-eight children/adolescents

BACKGROUND Girls' depressive symptoms typically increase in adolescence, with individual differences in course and severity being key risk factors for impaired emotional functioning in young adulthood. Given the continued brain white matter (WM) maturation that occurs in adolescence, the present study tested whether structural connectivity patterns in late adolescence are associated with variation

BACKGROUND Previous research demonstrated atypical attention in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Regarding visual orienting, findings suggest a differential impairment: Atypical orienting to relatively unexpected targets in ASD, and atypical processing of alerting cues in ADHD. The locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system plays an

BACKGROUND We examined whether childhood conduct problems predicted a wide range of adverse outcomes in emerging adulthood and whether the association with internalizing problems remained after adjusting for general comorbidity and externalizing problems. METHODS Participants were 18,649 twins from the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden. At age 9/12, parents rated their children on eight conduct

BACKGROUND Mental disorders, including Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), have a complex etiology, and identification of underlying genetic risk factors is challenging. This study used a multistep approach to identify and validate a novel risk gene for ADHD and psychiatric comorbidity. METHODS In a single family, severely affected by ADHD and cooccurring disorders, we applied single nucleotide

OBJECTIVE Childhood-onset depression is associated with increased risk of recurrent depression and high morbidity extending into adolescence and adulthood. This multisite randomized controlled trial evaluated two active psychosocial treatments for childhood depression: family-focused treatment for childhood depression (FFT-CD) and individual supportive psychotherapy (IP). Aims were to describe effects

This commentary refers to research by IJzendoorn and colleagues (2019), who conducted an umbrella synthesis on child maltreatment antecedents and interventions. Comments that I offer underscore the valuable contribution of this work for ongoing research, policy, and practice relevant to the etiology and prevention of child maltreatment. The synthesis brings clarity to a growing and diverse body of