Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Children Living With Addicted Family Members: Prevention Challenges in an Underprivileged Suburban Community

Abstract Children living with substance abusers are more likely to experience negative outcomes. Our goal was to compare caregivers' reports on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and a socioeconomic and risk form of psychological aspects of children exposed to substance abuse assisted versus not assisted by a preventive intervention program in an underprivileged community. This observational intervention study was conducted with 66 caregivers of children who attended the program and 35 caregivers of children from the same community who did not attend. Ages ranged between six and 11 years old. Chi-square and logistic regression tests indicate that children exposed to substance abusers have more mental health problems than the general population and those who did not participate in the preventive intervention program presented worse outcomes, with higher rates of behavioral/emotional problems and exposure to risk situations. Results suggest that preventive actions might be helpful to promote the mental health of children at risk, validating the need for public policies and services

Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children – Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL), DSM-5 update: translation into Brazilian Portuguese

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Predicting Anxiety Diagnoses and Severity with the CBCL-A: Improvement Relative to Other CBCL Scales?

The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is a widely used parent-report of child and adolescent behavior. We examined the ability of the CBCL-A scale, a previously published subset of CBCL items, to predict the presence of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), separation anxiety disorder (SAD), and social phobia (SoP), as well as anxiety severity, among 488 youth randomized in the Child Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS). We predicted that the CBCL-A’s unique inclusion of items related to somatic symptoms would better identify anxiety disorder and severity than other CBCL scales, given that somatic complaints are often key features of anxiety among youth. Results support the use of the anxiety-based CBCL subscales as first-line screeners for generally elevated symptoms of anxiety, rather than tools to identify specific anxiety disorders. Although somatic symptoms are often reported and included in diagnostic criteria for certain anxiety disorders (e.g., SAD, GAD), the unique combination of somatic and non-somatic symptoms for the CBCL-A subscale did not increase its ability to consistently predict the presence of specific anxiety disorders