In this article we have provided a perspective on the importance and value of youth mental health services for society and argued that advancing youth mental health services should be the number one ...priority of health services in Canada. Using the age period of 12–25 years for defining youth, we have provided justification for our position based on scientific evidence derived from clinical, epidemiological and neurodevelopmental studies. We have highlighted the early onset of most mental disorders and substance abuse as well as their persistence into later adulthood, the long delays experienced by most help seekers and the consequence of such delays for young people and for society in general. We have also provided a brief review of the current gross inadequacies in access and quality of care available in Canada. We have argued for the need for a different conceptual framework of youth mental disorders as well as for a transformation of the way services are provided in order not only to reduce the unmet needs but also to allow a more meaningful exploration of the nature of such problems presenting in youth and the best way to treat them. We have offered some ideas based on previous work completed in this field as well as current initiatives in Canada and elsewhere. Any transformation of youth mental health services in Canada must take into consideration the significant geographic, cultural and political diversity across the provinces, territories and indigenous peoples across this country.
Adolescents exposed to domestic violence are at high risk for dating abuse. This randomized controlled trial evaluated a dating abuse prevention program designed specifically for this risk group.
...Moms and Teens for Safe Dates
consisted of six mailed booklets of dating abuse prevention information and interactive activities. Mothers who had been victims of domestic violence but no longer lived with the abuser delivered the program to their adolescents who had been exposed to the abuse. Mother and adolescent pairs (N = 409) were recruited through community advertising; the adolescents ranged from 12 to 16 years old and 64 % were female. Mothers and adolescents completed baseline and 6-month follow-up telephone interviews. Booklet completion in the treatment group ranged from 80 % for the first to 62 % for the last booklet. The analyses first tested whether program effects on dating abuse varied by four a priori identified moderators (mother’s psychological health, the amount of adolescent exposure to domestic violence, and adolescent sex and race/ethnicity). Main effects of the program were examined when there were no differential program effects. Program effects on psychological and physical victimization and psychological and cyber perpetration were moderated by the amount of adolescent exposure to domestic violence; there were significant favorable program effects for adolescents with higher, but not lower levels of exposure to domestic violence. There were no moderated or main effects on sexual violence victimization and perpetration or cyber victimization. The findings suggest that a dating abuse prevention program designed for adolescents exposed to domestic violence can have important positive effects.
Childhood maltreatment, including both abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) and neglect (physical and emotional), is especially detrimental to adolescent development. However, most studies have ...been conducted within a psychopathological framework and focused on its role in exacerbating negative outcomes. Its adverse effect on adolescents’ positive functioning, including empathy, gratitude, and prosocial behavior, is relatively underexplored.
Guided by attachment theory, empathy-altruism hypothesis, and broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study examined the relationship between childhood maltreatment and prosocial behavior using a multiple mediation model that included empathy and gratitude as hypothesized mediators.
A sample of 897 adolescent students (45.80 % males and 54.20 % females; Mage = 15.41 years, SD = 1.73) completed questionnaires regarding demographics, childhood maltreatment, empathy, gratitude, and prosocial behavior.
The results indicated that the prevalence rates of physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and sexual abuse were 10.81 %, 58.97 %, 19.84 %, 53.51 %, and 15.61 %, respectively. After controlling for demographic covariates, the results revealed that: (a) childhood maltreatment was negatively associated with prosocial behavior; (b) empathy and gratitude mediated the link between childhood maltreatment and prosocial behavior in a parallel fashion; and (c) empathy and gratitude also mediated the link between childhood maltreatment and prosocial behavior in a sequential fashion.
Childhood maltreatment is negatively related to adolescent prosocial behavior, and the relation is mediated by empathy and gratitude both parallelly and sequentially.
Current models of adolescent drinking behavior hypothesize that alcohol expectancies mediate the effects of other proximal and distal risk factors. This longitudinal study tested the hypothesis that ...the effects of parental alcohol involvement on their children's drinking behavior in mid-adolescence are mediated by the children's alcohol expectancies in early adolescence. A sample of 148 initially 9-11 year old boys and their parents from a high-risk population and a contrast group of community families completed measures of drinking behavior and alcohol expectancies over a 6-year interval. We analyzed data from middle childhood (
M
age = 10.4 years), early adolescence (
M
age = 13.5 years), and mid-adolescence (
M
age = 16.5 years). The sample was restricted only to adolescents who had begun to drink by mid-adolescence. Results from zero-inflated Poisson regression analyses showed that 1) maternal drinking during their children's middle childhood predicted number of drinking days in middle adolescence; 2) negative and positive alcohol expectancies in early adolescence predicted odds of any intoxication in middle adolescence; and 3) paternal alcoholism during their children's middle childhood and adolescents' alcohol expectancies in early adolescence predicted frequency of intoxication in middle adolescence. Contrary to predictions, child alcohol expectancies did not mediate the effects of parental alcohol involvement in this high-risk sample. Different aspects of parental alcohol involvement, along with early adolescent alcohol expectancies, independently predicted adolescent drinking behavior in middle adolescence. Alternative pathways for the influence of maternal and paternal alcohol involvement and implications for expectancy models of adolescent drinking behavior were discussed.
Previous work on the contribution of family environments to adolescent emotion dysregulation has tended to focus on broad parenting characteristics (such as warmth); however, it is possible that ...day-to-day variability in parenting may also relate to emotion dysregulation. The current study sought to test whether inconsistency in the quality of daily parent-youth interactions related to multiple indices of emotion dysregulation in adolescents. Two-hundred-twenty-two adolescents (ages 13-16; 53% female) participated with one parent. Adolescents completed 14-days of diary reporting on the quality of interactions with their parent (negative/neutral/positive) and their emotion dysregulation experiences for each day. Analyses reveal that, beyond the effects of average interaction quality, adolescents with greater variability in the quality of their interactions with their parent reported greater average emotion dysregulation across the days of diary recording and demonstrated greater variability in their ratings of daily emotion dysregulation. Findings were not accounted for by parental warmth or hostility, parent-reported trait-level emotion regulation, or day-level associations between study variables. In these ways, greater variability - and not merely greater negativity - during interactions between parents and adolescents was related to adolescent emotion dysregulation, suggesting that consistency in parent-adolescent relationships may be an important dimension of psychosocial risk to consider within families.
The extent to which psychological wellbeing may play a preventive and therapeutic role in the development and maintenance of adolescent emotional disorders depends, in part, on the nature of the ...overlap between these two constructs. We estimated network analysis to examine the relationship between adolescent psychopathology (measured by depression and anxiety symptoms) and psychological wellbeing (measured by happiness, optimism, social support, perceived control, and gratitude).
This was a cross-sectional study with a large community sample of Kenyan adolescents (N = 2192, aged 13-18). Network analyses were conducted to examine the topology, stability, centrality, and bridge nodes of a network of psychopathology and psychological wellbeing measures.
Two distinct community clusters emerged, one for psychopathology nodes and another for wellbeing nodes, suggesting that these are two distinct but connected concepts. Central and bridge nodes of the wellbeing and psychopathology network were identified. The most central nodes in the network were family provides emotional help and support and self-blame; the strongest negative edges between psychopathology and psychological wellbeing were depressed mood-I love life and irritability-I am a joyful person; the main bridge nodes were family helps me and I can talk to family about problems.
Our findings expand understanding of the relationship between psychopathology and wellbeing in an understudied population and are suggestive of how psychological wellbeing can inform psychopathological treatment and preventive efforts in low-income regions such as those in Sub Saharan Africa.
This review discusses the relevance of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) to clinical research in child and adolescent psychiatry.
We summarize the ...characteristics of the NIMH RDoC project and then provide examples of RDoC designs that are of relevance to clinical investigators in child and adolescent psychiatry. The final section addresses questions regarding the impact of RDoC on clinical care.
RDoC encourages investigators to investigate psychopathology dimensionally: greater or lesser degrees of healthy/adapted functioning of neurobiological, cognitive, and behavioral processes (constructs) that cut across current diagnostic categories. Elucidation of the developmental components of RDoC constructs is needed to ensure they are fully validated. Integrating RDoC approaches into clinical research of child and adolescent psychopathology is contributing to our understanding of development as an aspect of the heterogeneity within DSM disorders and commonalities across seemingly disparate disorders. Continued efforts promise to also explain the processes that lead to mental illness in at-risk populations.
Incorporating an RDoC approach in clinical research in child and adolescent psychiatry promises to be a fruitful avenue of research into the root causes and manifestations of mental illness, which will eventually lead to more precise treatments. Although the long-term aspiration of RDoC is to help reduce the burden of suffering for those with mental illnesses, it is not intended to be used for practical clinical purposes at this early stage.
Recent research shows an increased concern with well-being at school and potential problems associated with students’ use of socio-digital technologies, i.e., the mobile devices, computers, social ...media, and the Internet. Simultaneously with supporting creative social activities, socio-digital participation may also lead to compulsive and addictive behavioral patterns affecting both general and school-related mental health problems. Using two longitudinal data waves gathered among 1702 (53 % female) early (age 12–14) and 1636 (64 % female) late (age 16–18) Finnish adolescents, we examined cross-lagged paths between excessive internet use, school engagement and burnout, and depressive symptoms. Structural equation modeling revealed reciprocal cross-lagged paths between excessive internet use and school burnout among both adolescent groups: school burnout predicted later excessive internet use and excessive internet use predicted later school burnout. Reciprocal paths between school burnout and depressive symptoms were also found. Girls typically suffered more than boys from depressive symptoms and, in late adolescence, school burnout. Boys, in turn, more typically suffered from excessive internet use. These results show that, among adolescents, excessive internet use can be a cause of school burnout that can later spill over to depressive symptoms.
Emotional variability has been posited as a risk factor for adolescent psychopathology. However, it is unclear whether parent emotional variability may also function as a risk factor that heightens ...adolescent mental health problems. To fill this gap, the present study examined whether parent and adolescent emotional variability in both positive emotion (PE) and negative emotion (NE) is associated with adolescent psychopathology and potential sex differences in these associations. Participants were 147 adolescents and their parents in Taiwan who completed a baseline assessment, a 10-day daily diary study, and a 3-month follow-up assessment. The results indicated that parent NE variability was associated with risk for adolescent internalizing problems and depressive symptoms, after accounting for baseline levels, adolescent NE variability, parent internalizing problems, and mean levels of parent and adolescent NE. Adolescent PE variability was also associated with the risk for adolescent externalizing problems. Furthermore, higher parent PE variability was associated with more internalizing problems only for female but not male adolescents. The findings highlight the importance of assessing emotion dynamics in both parents and adolescents to better understand the development of adolescent psychopathology.
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