Irritability, Negative Life Events and the Course of Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms in a Clinical Sample of Youth: A Longitudinal Study.

Objective: Irritability, the tendency to react with anger, and the experience of negative life events (NLE) have independently been associated with the emergence of anxiety and depression. Here, we investigate how irritability and cumulative effects of NLE interactively predict the course of anxiety and depression in the context of common psychiatric disorders.

Method: 432 youth with no psychiatric diagnosis, or a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD), participated in this study.

Modeling Shared and Specific Variances of Irritability, Inattention, and Hyperactivity Yields Novel Insights Into White Matter Perturbations.

Objective: Irritability, inattention, and hyperactivity, which are common presentations of childhood psychopathology, have been associated with perturbed white matter microstructure. However, similar tracts have been implicated across these phenotypes; such non-specificity could be rooted in their high co-occurrence. To address this problem, we use a bifactor approach parsing unique and shared components of irritability, inattention, and hyperactivity, which we then relate to white matter microstructure.