Development and examination of the reactive attachment disorder and disinhibited social engagement disorder assessment interview

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM) categorizes reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED) as two separate disorders, and their criteria are revised. For DSED, the core symptoms focus on abnormal social disinhibition, and symptoms regarding lack of selective attachment have been removed. The core symptoms of RAD are the absence of attachment behaviors and emotional dysregulation. In this study, an international team of researchers modified the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment for RAD to update it from DSM-IV to DSM-5 criteria for RAD and DSED. We renamed the interview the reactive attachment disorder and disinhibited social engagement disorder assessment (RADA). Foster parents of 320 young people aged 11 to 17 years completed the RADA online. Confirmatory factor analysis of RADA items identified good fit for a three-factor model, with one factor comprising DSED items (indiscriminate behaviors with strangers) and two factors comprising RAD items (RAD1: failure to seek/accept comfort, and RAD2: withdrawal/hypervigilance). The three factors showed differential associations with clinical symptoms of emotional and social impairment. Time in foster care was not associated with scores on RAD1, RAD2, or DSED. Higher age was associated with lower scores on DSED, and higher scores on RAD1

Diagnostic specificity and nonspecificity in the dimensions of preschool psychopathology

The appropriateness of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) nosology for classifying preschool mental health disturbances continues to be debated. To inform this debate, we investigate whether preschool psychopathology shows differentiation along diagnostically specific lines when DSM-IV symptoms are aggregated statistically

Psychometric Properties of the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA) in Farsi: Based on DSM-5

ObjectivesThe first onset of many psychiatric disorders usually occurs inchildhood or adolescence. The structured interview of Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA) was developed in response to the need for a standardized and reliable method to assess psychiatric disorders in preschool-age children. This study aimed to translate DSM-5-based PAPA into Farsi and evaluate its face and content validity and reliability.Materials & MethodsThe procedure was a forward translation of PAPA to Farsi, evaluation for face and content validity, finalization of items within the expert panel, backward translation to English, matching the original PAPA with randomly selected items from the backward translation version, and revision as needed, and finally evaluation for the validity of the changes for localization and cultural considerations. The interviews based on the final Farsi version were performed on thirty parents of children from two to five years old (chosen from Tabriz health centers) to determine the reliability and were repeated at an interval of two weeks. ResultsThe mean of CVI=0.91 and Modified Kappa=0.90 were obtained, and reliability with Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89.ConclusionThe Farsi version of the DSM-5-based PAPA diagnostic interview has good face and content validity and reliability

Perceived Family Impact of Preschool Anxiety Disorders

We examined the perceived impact of child anxiety disorders on family functioning, because such impact is a key predictor of mental health service receipt. Additionally, we examined the relative impact of preschool anxiety compared to other early childhood disorders, and whether this impact persisted after accounting for the effects of comorbidity, or varied by child age and sex

Adult Diagnostic and Functional Outcomes of DSM-5 Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder

Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder is a new disorder for DSM-5 that is uncommon and frequently co-occurs with other psychiatric disorders. Here, we test whether meeting diagnostic criteria for this disorder in childhood predicts adult diagnostic and functional outcomes

Preschool Anxiety Disorders in Pediatric Primary Care: Prevalence and Comorbidity

We sought to establish prevalence rates and detail patterns of comorbidity for generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and social phobia, in preschool aged children

Longitudinal dimensionality of adolescent psychopathology: Testing the differentiation hypothesis

The differentiation hypothesis posits that the underlying liability distribution for psychopathology is of low dimensionality in young children, inflating diagnostic comorbidity rates, but increases in dimensionality with age. This hypothesis not been adequately tested with longitudinal psychiatric symptom data

Young children have social worries too: validation of a brief parent report measure of social worries in children aged 4–8 years

This study investigated the psychometric properties of the Social Worries Anxiety Index for Young children (SWAIY), adapted from the Social Worries Questionnaire—Parent version (SWQ-P; Spence, 1995), as a measure of social anxiety in young children. 169 parents of children aged four to eight years from a community sample completed the SWAIY and a standardized measure of anxiety; the SWAIY was completed again two weeks later. Parents deemed the items appropriate and relevant to children of this age. The SWAIY demonstrated excellent ( > 0.80) internal consistency and a one-factor model. Test-retest reliability was strong (r = 0.87) and evidence of convergent validity (r > .50) was found. The study provides initial evidence for the validation of SWAIY as a measure of social anxiety in children aged four to eight years old. This questionnaire is ideal for investigating social anxiety over early childhood and the relationship between early social worries and later anxiety disorders

Changes in the prevalence of mental health problems during the first year of the pandemic: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis

Aim: To describe the pattern of the prevalence of mental health problems during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and examine the impact of containment measures on these trends. Methods: We identified articles published until 30 August 2021 that reported the prevalence of mental health problems in the general population at two or more time points. A crowd of 114 reviewers extracted data on prevalence, study and participant characteristics. We collected information on the number of days since the first SARS-CoV-2 infection in the study country, the stringency of containment measures and the number of cases and deaths. We synthesised changes in prevalence during the pandemic using a random-effects model. We used dose-response meta-analysis to evaluate the trajectory of the changes in mental health problems. Results: We included 41 studies for 7 mental health conditions. The average odds of symptoms increased during the pandemic (mean OR ranging from 1.23 to 2.08). Heterogeneity was very large and could not be explained by differences in participants or study characteristics. Average odds of psychological distress, depression and anxiety increased during the first 2 months of the pandemic, with increased stringency of the measures, reported infections and deaths. The confidence in the evidence was low to very low. Conclusions: We observed an initial increase in the average risk of psychological distress, depression-related and anxiety-related problems during the first 2 months of the pandemic. However, large heterogeneity suggests that different populations had different responses to the challenges imposed by the pandemic