This study examined predictors of aggression and assessed whether different subgroups of children and young people (CYP) display varying risks of aggressive incidents during hospitalization. Data from 10,090 children admitted to the psychiatric inpatient units of Cincinnati Children's Hospital between April 2010 and June 2021 were analysed. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to determine significant predictors associated with aggression, followed by average marginal effects and cluster analyses to rank and establish clusters by the order of predictor importance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAggression is a major challenge on child/adolescent inpatient psychiatric units. A screening instrument to accurately identify risk is urgently needed. To determine the predictive validity of the Brief Rating of Aggression by Children and Adolescents (BRACHA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Psychiatry Rep
March 2022
Purpose Of Review: Emotion dysregulation and outbursts are very common reasons for referral to child and adolescent mental health services and a frequent cause of admission to hospitals and residential programs. Symptoms of emotion dysregulation and outburst are transdiagnostic, associated with many disorders, have the potential to cause severe impairment and their management presents a major challenge in clinical practice.
Recent Findings: There are an increasing number of psychosocial interventions that demonstrate promise in improving emotion dysregulation and outbursts.
The goal of the current study is to assess whether the scores of Brief Rating of Aggression by Children and Adolescents (BRACHA) at the emergency room (ER) can predict the aggressive incidents at pediatric psychiatric inpatient units. The study aims to identify predictors for two outcome measurements: 1) hazard rates for the first aggressive incident and 2) numbers of days between admission and the first aggressive incident, using the Cox regression model and Poisson regression model, respectively. The clinical records of a total of 5,610 adolescents admitted into the pediatric psychiatric inpatient units of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center were extracted for the analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has yielded extensive impacts globally in the year of 2020. Although the mental health of children and adolescents may be particularly susceptible to stressors stemming from the pandemic and anti-contagion policies, most ongoing efforts are geared toward curbing the viral spread. In the current perspective, we have identified four domains of factors corresponding to an ecological framework that may directly or indirectly influence the mental health of children and adolescents during the pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The number of psychiatric encounters is steadily increasing across all pediatric emergency departments. Based on this growing national crisis, we hypothesized there is a lack of robust education in behavioral/mental health emergencies during pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) fellowship.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey of PEM fellowship directors.
Timely use of pharmacological interventions to treat acute agitation has the potential to decrease physical restraint use. The aim of this study is to determine if adherence to standardized pharmacological recommendations for the treatment of acutely agitated pediatric patients decreases physical restraint use. Additionally, this study aims to identify predictors of physical restraint use and describe treatment related adverse events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch does not occur in a vacuum. Effective stakeholder engagement occurs on several levels, including outside influence and cooperation inside the institution. Little guidance around designing and implementing pragmatic mental health research exists.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: School violence has a far-reaching effect, impacting the entire school population including staff, students and their families. Among youth attending the most violent schools, studies have reported higher dropout rates, poor school attendance, and poor scholastic achievement. It was noted that the largest crime-prevention results occurred when youth at elevated risk were given an individualized prevention program.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChildren of individuals with bipolar disorder (bipolar offspring) are at increased risk for developing mood disorders, but strategies to predict mood episodes are unavailable. In this study, we used support vector machine (SVM) to characterize the potential of proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-MRS) in predicting the first mood episode in youth bipolar offspring. From a longitudinal neuroimaging study, 19 at-risk youth who developed their first mood episode (converters), and 19 without mood episodes during follow-up (non-converters) were selected and matched for age, sex and follow-up time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLittle is known regarding the time trend of mass shootings and associated risk factors. In the current study, we intended to explore the time trend and relevant risk factors for mass shootings in the U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHere we report a case of a 15-year-old female who had originally been diagnosed and treated unsuccessfully for schizophrenia, psychosis, severe anxiety, and depression. More in-depth history revealed an abrupt onset of her symptoms with remote acute infections and many exhibited characteristics of obsessive compulsive disorder with rituals. Work-up for underlying infectious, immunodeficiency, and autoimmune causes was unrevealing except for very high levels of anti-neuronal antibodies which have been linked to Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSchool violence has increased over the past ten years. This study evaluated students using a more standard and sensitive method to help identify students who are at high risk for school violence. 103 participants were recruited through Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) from psychiatry outpatient clinics, the inpatient units, and the emergency department.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial information processing theory hypothesizes that aggressive children pay more attention to cues of hostility and threat in others' behavior, consequently leading to over-interpretation of others' behavior as hostile. While there is abundant evidence of aggressive children demonstrating hostile attribution biases, less well documented is whether such biases stem from over-attendance and hypersensitivity to hostile cues in social situations. Over-attendance to hostile cues would be typified by deviations at any stage of the multi-stage process of social information processing models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In pediatric patients with anxiety disorders, existing symptom inventories are either not freely available or require extensive time and effort to administer. We sought to evaluate a brief self-report scale-the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7)-in adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
Methods: The Pediatric Anxiety Rating Scale (PARS) and the GAD-7 were administered to youth with GAD (confirmed by structured interview).
Background: Studying youth at high risk of developing bipolar disorder may clarify neurobiological factors associated with vulnerability to this illness. We present here a baseline characterization of brain structure in youth at-risk for bipolar disorder.
Methods: Magnetic resonance images were obtained from 115 child and adolescent offspring of bipolar disorder type I subjects and 57 healthy child and adolescent offspring of healthy parents (healthy control offspring).
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
November 2016
Objective: To examine prefrontal and amygdala activation during emotional processing in youth with or at varying risk for developing mania to identify candidate central prodromal risk biomarkers.
Method: Four groups of medication-free adolescents (10-20 years old) participated: adolescents with first-episode bipolar I disorder (BP-I; n = 32), adolescents with a parent with bipolar disorder and a depressive disorder (at-risk depressed [ARD]; n = 32), healthy adolescents with a parent with bipolar disorder (at-risk healthy [ARH]; n = 32), and healthy adolescents with no personal or family history of psychiatric illness (healthy comparison [HC]; n = 32). Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a continuous performance task with emotional and neutral distracters.
School violence has increased over the past decade and innovative, sensitive, and standardized approaches to assess school violence risk are needed. In our current feasibility study, we initialized a standardized, sensitive, and rapid school violence risk approach with manual annotation. Manual annotation is the process of analyzing a student's transcribed interview to extract relevant information (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current adult and child forensic psychiatrist is well trained, familiar, and comfortable with the use of the semi-structured Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, APA 2013 (DSM-5) [In APA, 2003] interview style. The author's assertion is not that this method is invalid or unreliable; rather, that it can be complemented by integrating elements of the defendant's four pillar assessment. Assessing the four pillars expands on the information provided by a semi-structured DSM-5-style interview in psychiatry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigh-throughput technologies, ranging from microarrays to NexGen sequencing of RNA and genomic DNA, have opened new avenues for exploration of the pathobiology of human disease. Comparisons of the architecture of the genome, identification of mutated or modified sequences, and pre-and post- transcriptional regulation of gene expression as disease specific biomarkers are revolutionizing our understanding of the causes of disease and are guiding the development of new therapies. There is enormous heterogeneity in types of genomic variation that occur in human disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWorld J Psychiatry
March 2015
Previous evidence suggests that emotion dysregulation may have different biological correlates between adults and children/adolescents. Although the role of genetic factors has been extensively studied in adult-onset emotion dysregulation, the genetic basis for pediatric-onset emotion dysregulation remains elusive. The current review article presents a summary of previous studies that have suggested a few genetic variants associated with pediatric emotion dysregulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe mechanisms underlying aggression in adolescents with bipolar disorder have been poorly understood. The present study has investigated the associations among TNF gene expressions, functional brain activations under the frustrative non-reward task, and aggression in adolescents with bipolar disorder. Baseline gene expressions and aggressive tendencies were measured with the RNA-sequencing and Brief Rating of Aggression by Children and Adolescents (BRACHA), respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe following review article examines the value of a dimensional approach to research in relation to recent findings of child and adolescent emotion dysregulation. With the publication of the DSM-5, it is important to keep in mind that difficulties in pinpointing causal mechanisms may result from the collective grouping of different emotional deficits by diagnoses. Evidence available from studies examining pediatric emotion dysregulation indicate strengths in the dimensional approach for research, especially in light of developmental changes to neural activations of emotion regulation.
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