Child posttraumatic stress symptoms in an acute injury sample: Patterns of associations among child report, parent report, and child heart rate parameters.

Parent-child agreement on measures of child posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is moderate at best, and understanding of this discrepancy is limited. To address this, we conducted an item-level investigation of parent-child symptom agreement to examine the potential influence of parental posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) on parents' reports of their child's PTSS. We also examined heart rate (HR) indices as possible independent indicators of child PTSD, examining patterns of association with parent versus child report.

A Longitudinal Examination of the Relationship between Trauma-Related Cognitive Factors and Internalising and Externalising Psychopathology in Physically Injured Children.

Cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) highlight maladaptive posttrauma appraisals, trauma memory qualities, and coping strategies, such as rumination or thought suppression, as key processes that maintain PTSD symptoms. Anxiety, depression and externalising symptoms can also present in children in the aftermath of trauma, yet there has been little empirical investigation of the potential relevance of posttrauma cognitive processes for such difficulties. Here, we examined whether: a) acute maladaptive cognitive processes (specifically, maladaptive appraisals, memory qualities, and cognitive coping) were associated with symptoms of PTSD, internalising, and externalising at 1-month posttrauma (T1); and b) changes in these cognitive processes predicted symptom change at a follow-up assessment 6 months later (T2).

A longitudinal investigation of the role of parental responses in predicting children's post-traumatic distress.

Background: While parental post-trauma support is considered theoretically important for child adjustment, empirical evidence concerning the specific aspects of parental responding that influence child post-traumatic distress, or the processes via which any such impacts occur, is extremely limited. We conducted a longitudinal examination of whether parental post-trauma appraisals, trauma-specific support style and general parenting style predicted child post-traumatic stress symptom severity (PTSS) following trauma; and whether such influences operated via the child's own appraisals and coping style.

Method: We recruited 132 parent-child pairs following children's experience of acute trauma.

Research Review: Changes in the prevalence and symptom severity of child post-traumatic stress disorder in the year following trauma - a meta-analytic study.

Background: Understanding the natural course of child and adolescent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has significant implications for the identification of, and intervention for, at-risk youth. We used a meta-analytic approach to examine longitudinal changes in youth PTSD prevalence and symptoms over the first 12 months posttrauma.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review to identify longitudinal studies of PTSD in young people (5-18 years old), excluding treatment trials.

A comparison of mental state examination documentation by junior clinicians in electronic health records before and after the introduction of a semi-structured assessment template (OPCRIT+).

Objectives: The mental state examination (MSE) provides crucial information for healthcare professionals in the assessment and treatment of psychiatric patients as well as potentially providing valuable data for mental health researchers accessing electronic health records (EHRs). We wished to establish if improvements could be achieved in the documenting of MSEs by junior doctors within a large United Kingdom mental health trust following the introduction of an EHR based semi-structured MSE assessment template (OPCRIT+).

Methods: First, three consultant psychiatrists using a modified version of the Physician Documentation Quality Instrument-9 (PDQI-9) blindly rated fifty MSEs written using OPCRIT+ and fifty normal MSEs written with no template.

Harnessing clinical psychiatric data with an electronic assessment tool (OPCRIT+): the utility of symptom dimensions.

Progress in personalised psychiatry is dependent on researchers having access to systematic and accurately acquired symptom data across clinical diagnoses. We have developed a structured psychiatric assessment tool, OPCRIT+, that is being introduced into the electronic medical records system of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust which can help to achieve this. In this report we examine the utility of the symptom data being collected with the tool.

Sensorimotor gating and D2 receptor signalling: evidence from a molecular genetic approach.

Converging evidence from pharmacological investigations, genetic association studies and schizophrenia research indicates an important influence of the dopamine system on sensorimotor gating as measured by prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle response. In particular, D2 receptor agonists have been shown to disrupt PPI in humans and rodents. In the present study, we investigated the associations of two functional DRD2 related single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs4648317 and rs1800497, the latter also known as DRD2/ANKK1 Taq1A) with PPI in two independent healthy human samples (overall n=197; Munich n=101; London n=96).