Advancing Mental Health Research Through Strategic Integration of Transdiagnostic Dimensions and Genomics.

Genome wide studies are yielding a growing catalogue of common and rare variants that confer risk for psychopathology. Yet, despite representing unprecedented progress, emerging data also indicate that the full promise of psychiatric genetics - including understanding pathophysiology and improving personalized care - will not be fully realized by targeting traditional, dichotomous diagnostic categories. The current article provides reflections on themes emerging from a 2021 NIMH sponsored conference convened to address strategies for the evolving field of psychiatric genetics.

Comparing in-home telehealth and in-person administration of neuropsychological measures in an outpatient pediatric sample during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research establishing the validity of neuropsychological assessment using telehealth (teleNP) is much needed in pediatric populations. Current analyses compared performances on twelve common neuropsychological measures completed at home teleNP or in-person during the COVID-19 pandemic in 476 youth (ages 6 to 17, M 11.4 ± 3.

Editorial: Can Improving Youth Mental Health Reduce Mortality?

It is well established that mental health conditions, including substance use disorders, are associated with premature mortality. A meta-analysis has demonstrated that this association holds across a range of diagnoses. Although the effect is stronger for schizophrenia, depression and anxiety contribute to more deaths overall because of their high prevalence rates.

Polygenic Variation Underlying Educational Attainment and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Indexes Behavior Ratings of Executive Functions in Child Psychiatry Outpatients.

Objective: We leveraged common genetic variation underlying ADHD, educational attainment (EA) and cognition (COG) to understand the nature of the Behavior Rating Inventory for Executive Functions (BRIEF) and its relationship to academic functioning.

Method: Participants were 991 youth, ages 7 to 17, consecutively referred for neuropsychiatric evaluation. Polygenic scores (PGS) for ADHD, EA, and COG were related to the BRIEF using regression analyses.

Editors' Best of 2023.

There is, in the content of the Journal, an embarrassment of riches, and picking a "best" seems to demand a certain qualification: is the "best" the most interesting, most surprising, most educational, most important, most provocative, most enjoyable? How to choose? We are hardly unbiased and can admit to a special affection for the ones that we and the authors worked hardest on, modifying version after version into shape. Acknowledging these biases, here are the 2023 articles that we think deserve your attention or at least a second read.

Differences in cognitive and academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in child psychiatric outpatients.

This study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cognitive and academic functioning in 574 youth presenting for outpatient clinical neuropsychiatric evaluations. We extended the prior literature by (a) determining the extent to which academic difficulties documented in population and community samples also occurred in child psychiatric outpatients; (b) evaluating the impact of the pandemic on neuropsychological functions relevant to academic performance (overall cognition, executive functions, and graphomotor skill); and (c) investigating the moderating impact of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis. We compared cross-sectional scores on standardized measures for groups of youth evaluated at three time periods related to the COVID-19 pandemic: (a) prior to onset (PRIOR; = 198), (b) during Year 1 (Y1; = 149), and (c) during Year 2 (Y2; = 227).

Youth Team Sports Participation Associates With Reduced Dimensional Psychopathology Through Interaction With Biological Risk Factors.

Background: Physical activity is associated with mental health benefits in youth. Here, we used causal inference and triangulation with 2 levels of biology to substantiate relationships between sports participation and dimensional psychopathology in youths.

Methods: Baseline data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which recruited children from 9 to 10 years of age across the United States, were included in multilevel regression models to assess relationships between lifetime participation in team sports (TS), individual sports, and nonsports activities and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) scores.

Genetic patterning for child psychopathology is distinct from that for adults and implicates fetal cerebellar development.

Childhood psychiatric symptoms are often diffuse but can coalesce into discrete mental illnesses during late adolescence. We leveraged polygenic scores (PGSs) to parse genomic risk for childhood symptoms and to uncover related neurodevelopmental mechanisms with transcriptomic and neuroimaging data. In independent samples (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, Generation R) a narrow cross-disorder neurodevelopmental PGS, reflecting risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, depression and Tourette syndrome, predicted psychiatric symptoms through early adolescence with greater sensitivity than broad cross-disorder PGSs reflecting shared risk across eight psychiatric disorders, the disorder-specific PGS individually or two other narrow cross-disorder (Compulsive, Mood-Psychotic) scores.

Uncovering and mitigating bias in large, automated MRI analyses of brain development.

Large, population-based MRI studies of adolescents promise transformational insights into neurodevelopment and mental illness risk . However, MRI studies of youth are especially susceptible to motion and other artifacts . These artifacts may go undetected by automated quality control (QC) methods that are preferred in high-throughput imaging studies, 5 and can potentially introduce non-random noise into clinical association analyses.

Behavior ratings of executive functions index multiple domains of psychopathology and school functioning in child psychiatric outpatients.

Behavior rating scales of executive functions (EFs) are convenient and associate with academic and other outcomes; however, prior studies indicate limited correlations with psychometric tests of EFs. To better understand their potential for clinical utility, we examined the extent to which parent ratings on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) related to psychopathology constructs and psychometric test scores in a sample of  = 692 psychiatric outpatients aged 8-17. Then, in a subsample of the youth ( = 261), we related the BRIEF, psychopathology constructs, and psychometric test scores to teacher ratings of school functioning.

Identifying Pediatric Mood Disorders From Transdiagnostic Polygenic Risk Scores: A Study of Children and Adolescents.

Mood disorders often co-occur with attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD), disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs), and aggression. We aimed to determine if polygenic risk scores (PRSs) based on external genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of these disorders could improve genetic identification of mood disorders. We combined 6 independent family studies that had genetic data and diagnoses for mood disorders that were made using different editions of the ().

Distinct patterns of emotional and behavioral change in child psychiatry outpatients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Studies are documenting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth mental health. We extended this literature by characterizing a child psychiatric outpatient sample in the United States during the middle of the 2020-2021 school year. We also used a computational strategy to identify distinct patterns of psychopathology symptom change and examined correlates and predictors of such change.

Neuropsychological Profile of an Adolescent Female With Ectodermal Dysplasia With Hypohidrosis.

The ectodermal dysplasias are a group of rare genetic disorders that are caused by abnormalities in cell and tissue development of the embryonic ectoderm. A paucity of research has systematically examined the cognitive, academic, and psychological phenotype of individuals with ectodermal dysplasia. We describe the neuropsychological profile of a female adolescent with ectodermal dysplasia with hypohidrosis.

Association of adverse prenatal exposure burden with child psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

Objective: Numerous adverse prenatal exposures have been individually associated with risk for psychiatric illness in the offspring. However, such exposures frequently co-occur, raising questions about their cumulative impact. We evaluated effects of cumulative adverse prenatal exposure burden on psychopathology risk in school-aged children.

Analysis of structural brain asymmetries in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in 39 datasets.

Objective: Some studies have suggested alterations of structural brain asymmetry in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but findings have been contradictory and based on small samples. Here, we performed the largest ever analysis of brain left-right asymmetry in ADHD, using 39 datasets of the ENIGMA consortium.

Methods: We analyzed asymmetry of subcortical and cerebral cortical structures in up to 1,933 people with ADHD and 1,829 unaffected controls.

Polygenic association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder liability and cognitive impairments.

Background: A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified 12 independent loci significantly associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Polygenic risk scores (PRS), derived from the GWAS, can be used to assess genetic overlap between ADHD and other traits. Using ADHD samples from several international sites, we derived PRS for ADHD from the recent GWAS to test whether genetic variants that contribute to ADHD also influence two cognitive functions that show strong association with ADHD: attention regulation and response inhibition, captured by reaction time variability (RTV) and commission errors (CE).

Shared genetic background between children and adults with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by age-inappropriate symptoms of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity that persist into adulthood in the majority of the diagnosed children. Despite several risk factors during childhood predicting the persistence of ADHD symptoms into adulthood, the genetic architecture underlying the trajectory of ADHD over time is still unclear. We set out to study the contribution of common genetic variants to the risk for ADHD across the lifespan by conducting meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies on persistent ADHD in adults and ADHD in childhood separately and jointly, and by comparing the genetic background between them in a total sample of 17,149 cases and 32,411 controls.

Integrating questionnaire measures for transdiagnostic psychiatric phenotyping using word2vec.

Background: Recent initiatives in psychiatry emphasize the utility of characterizing psychiatric symptoms in a multidimensional manner. However, strategies for applying standard self-report scales for multiaxial assessment have not been well-studied, particularly where the aim is to support both categorical and dimensional phenotypes.

Methods: We propose a method for applying natural language processing to derive dimensional measures of psychiatric symptoms from questionnaire data.

Characteristics of child psychiatric outpatients with slow processing speed and potential mechanisms of academic impact.

While slow processing speed (PS) is well documented in youth with ADHD, growing evidence suggests that this difficulty affects children with other neuropsychiatric conditions. Clarifying the relationship between slow PS and different forms of psychopathology is important clinically, given the potential impact of PS on academic functioning, and conceptually. In 751 youth, ages 6-21, consecutively referred for neuropsychiatric evaluation, we examined the association between slow PS (i.

Translating Discoveries in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Genomics to an Outpatient Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Cohort.

Objective: Genomic discoveries should be investigated in generalizable child psychiatric samples in order to justify and inform studies that will evaluate their use for specific clinical purposes. In youth consecutively referred for neuropsychiatric evaluation, we examined 1) the convergent and discriminant validity of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) polygenic risk scores (PRSs) in relation to DSM-based ADHD phenotypes; 2) the association of ADHD PRSs with phenotypes beyond ADHD that share its liability and have implications for outcome; and 3) the extent to which youth with high ADHD PRSs manifest a distinctive clinical profile.

Method: Participants were 433 youth, ages 7-18 years, from the Longitudinal Study of Genetic Influences on Cognition.