Strengthening Support for Community Mental Health Programs Through Partnership and Collective Impact.

Effective partnerships can profoundly impact outcomes for youth with behavioral health concerns. Partnerships occur at multiple levels - at the individual, organizational, state, and national levels. The Systems of Care (SOC) framework helps to conceptualize and articulate the skills necessary for forming partnerships in youth's mental health.

Puberty for Transgender Kids and Their Parents: Impressions from a Mom.

As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I am aware that puberty is a challenging experience for many adolescents and parents. As a parent of a transgender adolescent, I have seen the ways in which the experience of puberty is similar to and different from that of cisgender adolescents. In this article, I describe my thought process behind going forward with several medical interventions for my transgender child and relate this to broader observations about parents and puberty.

Parenting My Transgender Child: From Loss to Acceptance.

At age 11, my child Neo told me he was a boy and not a girl, as assigned at birth. Despite my training as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I struggled to accept his declaration and had to learn how to best support him. He was never a typical girl, but when he decided he was transgender, my husband and I navigated the adjustment to new pronouns, a name change, the transition at school, and telling friends and family.

Editorial: Can We Finally Call Wraparound Evidence-Based for Youths With Serious Emotional Disorders?

No greater obligation exists for child and adolescent psychiatrists than understanding how to take care of the most complex youths-those with serious emotional disorders (SEDs), co-occurring conditions, and multi-system involvement. Child and adolescent psychiatrists have the highest levels of training to assess the confluence of biological, environmental, and psychological factors affecting youths with complex behavioral health needs and to guide their treatment. With allied professionals expanding their capacity to take care of more straightforward behavioral health concerns, a clear domain of the child and adolescent psychiatrist becomes consultation, and at least a familiarity with working directly with the youths that are hardest to treat.

Systematic Review: System-wide Interventions to Monitor Pediatric Antipsychotic Prescribing and Promote Best Practice.

Objective: Rapid growth of antipsychotic use among children and adolescents at the turn of the 21st century led Medicaid programs to implement 3 types of system-wide interventions: antipsychotic monitoring programs, clinician prescribing supports, and delivery system enhancements. This systematic review assessed the available evidence base for and relative merits of these system-wide interventions that aim to improve antipsychotic treatment and management.

Method: Using PRISMA guidelines, eligible studies were written in English and evaluated system-wide interventions to monitor antipsychotic treatment or promote antipsychotic management among children and adolescents (0-21 years of age).

Cognitive and Behavioral Impact on Children Exposed to Opioids During Pregnancy.

The developmental impact of opioid use during pregnancy is a subject of ongoing debate. Short-term neonatal outcomes, such as lower birth weight and neonatal abstinence syndrome, are the most well-recognized outcomes. However, knowledge gaps exist regarding longer-term neurocognitive and mental health outcomes.

Do Parents Expect Pediatricians to Pay Attention to Behavioral Health?

Background And Objective: This study is a qualitative analysis examining caregivers' expectations for pediatricians with regard to behavioral health care.

Methods: Fifty-five parents/caregivers of children seen in an urban primary care clinic participated in semistructured interviews. Participants were parents or guardians of children between the ages of 2 and 17 years, referred from the pediatric clinic to the mental health center.

Does early mentorship in child and adolescent psychiatry make a difference? The Klingenstein Third-Generation Foundation Medical Student Fellowship Program.

Objective: There is a critical shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists in the United States. Increased exposure, through mentorship, clinical experiences, and research opportunities, may increase the number of medical students selecting child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) as a career choice.

Method: Between 2008 and 2011, 241 first-year participants of a program to increase exposure to CAP, funded by the Klingenstein Third-Generation Foundation (KTGF) at 10 medical schools completed baseline surveys assessing their opinions of and experiences in CAP, and 115 second-year participants completed follow-up surveys to reflect 1 year of experience in the KTGF Program.

Barriers to mental health care for urban, lower income families referred from pediatric primary care.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of parent-reported barriers on the likelihood of attending a mental health evaluation after referral from pediatric primary care. As the part of procedure, parents of children (N = 55) referred for mental health from primary care completed a 23-item questionnaire (three subscales; Cronbach alpha > 0.7): intangible barriers, tangible barriers, and child functioning.

Influence of caregivers' experiences on service use among children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Objective: This study examined how prior experiences of caregivers of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) leading up to treatment related to later service use.

Methods: The investigators interviewed caregivers of 48 children with ADHD recruited from outpatient clinic settings and recorded the children's medication use and clinic attendance six and 12 months later. Interview transcripts were analyzed to identify characteristic experiences, or themes, felt by the caregivers before seeking treatment.

Depressive symptoms and bias in perceived social competence among young adults.

We examined associations between depressive symptoms and young adults' self-perceptions of social competence to explore whether higher symptoms are associated with self-evaluations that are more accurate (i.e., depressive realism), negatively biased (i.

Being close and being social: peer ratings of distinct aspects of young adult social competence.

The present study had three main objectives: (1) to develop and validate scales of young adult social competence in two domains, close relationships and social groups, using peer ratings of California Q-sort (Block, 1974; Kremen & Block, 2002) items; (2) to test the hypothesis that social competence is associated with young adult well-being and ego development; (3) to test the hypothesis that close relationship competence aligns more closely than social group competence with young adult functioning. Psychometric data on peer ratings of social competence are presented. For 133 young adults, peer ratings of social competence were correlated in expected directions with indices of functioning (e.