Editors' Best of 2023.

In our inaugural year as , we are proud to support the dissemination of some of the highest quality research being conducted in our field. Choosing the "best" among stars is a tall order and most certainly misses the many ways articles make an impact: is the "best" the most interesting, most surprising, most educational, most important, most provocative, or most enjoyable? How to decide? This time around, we made some picks based on those that were methodologically rigorous and clinically salient. It is our pleasure to give a special "hats off" to the 2023 articles that we think deserve your attention or at least a second read!

Associations Between Dysregulation and Metabolic Syndrome in Youth and Adults.

Objective: Metabolic syndrome is a serious and costly health condition that is increasingly prevalent in the United States. Current treatment standards, which include lifestyle modification and medication, do not consistently yield sustainable improvements. High rates of co-occurrence with psychiatric disorders suggest that understanding psychological factors associated with metabolic syndrome may be important for enhancing interventions.

Peer Review in : Promoting Integrity While Advancing Open Science.

A critical piece in the launch of is the establishment of a high-quality and robust peer review process for incoming submissions. Indeed, peer review is the backbone of our scientific process. Here, we will discuss the importance of peer review, describe the process as we are expanding the journal family, and explain why and how you can be involved in the peer review process.

Future Directions: The Phenomenology of Irritable Mood and Outbursts: Hang Together or Hang Separately.

Recognition of the importance of irritable mood and outbursts has been increasing over the past several decades. This "Future Directions" aims to develop a set of recommendations for future research emphasizing that irritable mood and outbursts "hang together," but have important distinctions and thus also need to "hang separately." Outbursts that are the of irritable mood may be quite different from outbursts that are the or driving force that make youth and his/her environment miserable.

Irritability in Youths: A Critical Integrative Review.

Irritability, defined as proneness to anger that may impair an individual's functioning, is common in youths. There has been a recent upsurge in relevant research. The authors combine systematic and narrative review approaches to integrate the latest clinical and translational findings and provide suggestions for addressing research gaps.

Emotional and Behavioral Problem Profiles of Preteens With Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors: A Multicultural Study.

Objective: Self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB) among preteen children have risen to the attention of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. To shed light on potential treatment/prevention targets, we sought to identify empirically derived emotional and behavioral problem profiles of preteens with SITB, and to determine whether these profiles differ by age, gender and society.

Method: Caregivers of 46,719 children aged 6 to 12 years from 42 societies across the world completed the Child Behavior Checklist for ages 6-18 (CBCL/6-18).

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.

Study Registration: Encouraging the Practice of Hypothetical-Deductive Research in the Journal Revisited.

Five years ago, we wrote to you regarding our launching a new initiative for JAACAP: study registration. As we noted then, "study registration divides the peer review process into two stages. The first stage, preregistration, occurs at the time that the study is being planned, whereas the second occurs after the study is completed.

Our Hopes for .

With the launch of , we are thrilled to join the JAACAP family of journals and to facilitate expanded access to science generated in our field. We hope you are enjoying freely accessing, reading, and sharing the articles that we have published in thus far. Our journal family aims to promote the well-being of children and families globally by publishing original research and papers of theoretical, scientific, and clinical relevance to the field of child and adolescent mental health that are openly available for broad readership.

Editors' Note: Second Annual Report Regarding JAACAP's Antiracist Journey.

In 2020, we wrote to you of our dedication and vision for this Journal "to be antiracist at every level," outlining the following 6 initiatives "to reshape the Journal to pursue this vision:" (1) Issuing a Call for Papers on racism and its impacts on child development and children's mental health; (2) updating our Guide for Authors to emphasize that we will evaluate articles submitted to the Journal on whether their study designs are inclusive and their discussions consider and address human diversity and structural determinants of health in the context of their research questions and hypotheses; (3) assembling a special collection of Journal articles on bias, bigotry, discrimination, racism, and mental health inequities; (4) accelerating our efforts to make our Editorial Board inclusive and representative of our community of scientists and practitioners as well as the communities we serve; (5) engaging in continuing education and dialogue as an Editorial Board that will include antiracism training and praxis; and (6) critically examining "our editorial and peer review process to ensure it is antiracist." In this Editors' Note, we write to update you on our progress, including a new initiative we started in the past year: (7) a new option for authors to add a statement to their manuscripts regarding the inclusion and diversity initiatives and practices they employed in pursuing their work. With the launch this year of JAACAP Open, the Academy's new open access publication and the newest member of the JAACAP family of journals, we have expanded opportunities to pursue these efforts, and look forward to sharing more about JAACAP Open in future updates.

Narrative Review: Impairing Emotional Outbursts: What They Are and What We Should Do About Them.

Objective: Impairing emotional outbursts, defined by extreme anger or distress in response to relatively ordinary frustrations and disappointments, impact all mental health care systems, emergency departments, schools, and juvenile justice programs. However, the prevalence, outcome, and impact of outbursts are difficult to quantify because they are transdiagnostic and not explicitly defined by current diagnostic nosology. Research variably addresses outbursts under the rubrics of tantrums, anger, irritability, aggression, rage attacks, or emotional and behavioral dysregulation.

Frustration, Cognition, and Psychophysiology in Dysregulated Children: A Research Domain Criteria Approach.

Objective: Dysregulated children experience significant impairment in regulating their affect, behavior, and cognitions and are at risk for numerous adverse sequelae. The unclear phenomenology of their symptoms presents a barrier to evidence-based diagnosis and treatment.

Method: The cognitive, behavioral, and psychophysiological mechanisms of dysregulation were examined in a mixed clinical and community sample of 294 children ages 7-17 using the Research Domain Criteria constructs of cognitive control and frustrative nonreward.

Editors' Best of 2021.

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, hammering version after version into shape. Acknowledging these biases, here are the 2021 articles that we think deserve your attention or at least a second read.

Editors' Note: First Annual Report Regarding JAACAP's Antiracist Journey.

Last year, we wrote to you of our dedication and vision for this journal "to be antiracist at every level," outlining the following 6 initiatives "to reshape the Journal to pursue this vision:" (1) Issuing a Call for Papers "on racism and its impacts on child development and children's mental health;" (2) updating our Guide for Authors "to emphasize that we will evaluate articles submitted to the Journal on whether their study designs and discussions consider and address human diversity in the context of their research questions and hypotheses; (3) assembling a special collection of "Journal articles on bias, bigotry, racism, and mental health disparities;" (4) accelerating "our efforts to make our editorial board inclusive and representative of our community of scientists and practitioners as well as the communities we all serve;" (5) engaging in "continuing education and dialogue as an Editorial Board that will include antiracism training;" and (6) critically examining "our editorial and peer review process to ensure it is antiracist. In this Editors' Note, we write to update you on our progress.

Stability and Change of Psychopathology Symptoms Throughout Childhood and Adolescence.

Assessing stability and change of children's psychopathology symptoms can help elucidate whether specific behaviors are transient developmental variations or indicate persistent psychopathology. This study included 6930 children across early childhood (T1), late childhood (T2) and early adolescence (T3), from the general population. Latent profile analysis identified psychopathology subgroups and latent transition analysis quantified the probability that children remained within, or transitioned across psychopathology subgroups.

Me looking at you, looking at me: The stare-in-the-crowd effect and autism spectrum disorder.

Introduction: The stare-in-the-crowd (SITC) effect describes the ability to detect self-directed gaze in a crowd. Given the importance of gaze detection in initiating and maintaining social interactions, there is a need to better characterize the SITC effect.

Methods: Autistic and neurotypical young adults were presented with four SITC conditions.

Measurement of Dysregulation in Children and Adolescents.

This article highlights the breadth of measures available for measuring emotion dysregulation, or facets thereof, in children and adolescents, and reviews in detail a subset of these measures. We describe broadband measures and measures that are specific to emotion dysregulation, including observational tools, clinical interviews, and rating scales. Furthermore, we discuss the strengths, weaknesses, and psychometric properties of each approach and specific contexts or populations in which certain methods may be particularly useful.

Editors' Note and Special Communication: Research Priorities in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Emerging From the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Over the last year, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in profound disruptions across the globe, with school closures, social isolation, job loss, illness, and death affecting the lives of children and families in myriad ways. In an Editors' Note in our June 2020 issue, our senior editorial team described this Journal's role in advancing knowledge in child and adolescent mental health during the pandemic and outlined areas we identified as important for science and practice in our field. Since then, the Journal has published articles on the impacts of the pandemic on child and adolescent mental health and service systems, which are available in a special collection accessible through the Journal's website.

Editorial: Analyzing Treatment and Prescribing in Large Administrative Datasets With a Lens on Equity.

In this issue of the Journal, Bushnell and colleagues present findings from their analysis of a commercial insurance administrative dataset, examining the ways that antipsychotics are used in young children (aged 2-7 years) in the United States. From 2009 to 2017, they find that the use of antipsychotics decreased and there was a shift toward use of medications in alignment with evidence-based standards. The most common conditions for use of antipsychotics included pervasive developmental disorders, externalizing disorders, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Editors' Best of 2020.

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, hammering version after version into shape. Acknowledging these biases, here are the 2020 articles that we think deserve your attention, or at least a second read.