Assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents: Italian validation of the short version of the spence children's anxiety scale for parents.

The assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents requires a valid and reliable single instrument able to detect various anxiety symptoms early and systematically collect data from other informant such as parents. The present study aimed to test the one-factor structure of the SCAS-P-8 and to examine its psychometric properties and invariance across sex and age in an Italian sample of 769 parents of children and adolescents aged 3-18 years (50.8% females).

Problematic Social Media Use Among Italian Midadolescents: Protocol and Rationale of the SMART Project.

Background: Social media (SM) use constitutes a large portion of midadolescents' daily lives as a way of peer interaction. A significant percentage of adolescents experience intense or problematic social media use (PSMU), an etiologically complex behavior potentially associated with psychological distress. To date, studies longitudinally testing for risk or protective factors of PSMU, and collecting qualitative data are still scarce among midadolescents.

Exploring the Influence of / Polymorphic Variants on Adolescent Mental Health and Response to Vitamin D Supplementation in Embryonic Hippocampal Cell Lines.

Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the vitamin D receptor (VDR) have been observed in association with susceptibility to various pathologies, including autism, major depression, age-related changes in cognitive functioning, and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. This study aimed to establish the association between / polymorphic variants and anxious/depressive symptoms in nonclinical adolescents from central Italy, with the goal of identifying the risk of developing both symptoms. We found no significant difference in genotype distribution or dominant/recessive models of / polymorphic variants between subjects with anxious/depressive symptoms and controls.

Health-Related Quality of Life in Children with Overweight and Obesity: An Explorative Study Focused on School Functioning and Well-being.

Overweight and obesity in childhood has reached epidemic levels, and their roles in physical and psychological health are now recognized. Recently, researchers have focused on the impact of these weight problems in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) domains, which are less investigated in children. This exploratory study examined the differences in HRQoL domains between a clinical group who were overweight/obesity treatment-seeking (n = 58) and a normal-weight group (n = 44) in a sample of 102 children, with a specific focus on school functioning and well-being.