No Evidence That Substance Use Causes ADHD Symptoms in Adolescence

There is a robust association between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and elevated substance use. Several plausible causal pathways from ADHD to substance use have been articulated and supported empirically. In this study, we tested the recent suggestion that substance use could also influence levels of ADHD symptoms. Using the three most recent waves of data from the Zurich Project on the Social Development of Children and Youth (z-proso), we found significant and strong cross-lagged effects of ADHD symptoms on substance use but no significant effects in the opposite direction. This suggests that individual differences in substance use are not related to increases in ADHD symptoms in adolescence. Adolescent-onset symptoms of ADHD are thus unlikely to be caused by substance use, and targeting substance use problems is unlikely to reduce ADHD symptoms.Funding from the Jacobs Foundation (Grant 2010-888) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grants 100013_116829 & 100014_132124) is gratefully acknowledged

Decomposing the transdiagnostic nature of future-oriented mental process: Associations of future self-connectedness and future self-valence with mental illnesses

Future-oriented concepts have been shown to link to various mental illnesses. Given the tendency for mental illnesses to co-occur, and enhancing future-oriented mental process and functions are adopted as intervention strategies, there is a necessity to better understand the specific links between the dimensions of future-oriented mental process and general versus specific mental illnesses. This study was among the first to examine the transdiagnostic and disorder-specific associations between future self-connectedness/self-valence and mental illnesses. Bifactor analysis was utilised in z-proso wave 8 data (N=1180, age=20), the two core dimensions of future mental process. Bifactor analysis was based on the mental illness structure identified via a calibration and validation approach, which was suggested as the optimal operation. Symmetry bifactor analysis yielded insufficient support for a p-factor, therefore, further analyses were explored and an S-1 bifactor analysis achieved the best model fit. In a structural equation model, S-1 bifactor model yielded evidence that future self-valence and self-connectedness both negatively correlated with internalising, ADHD, psychosis-like symptoms, and substance use. These findings supported transdiagnostic process and potential intervention strategies of these future-oriented dimensions. However, they were associated via separate paths with ADHD, internalising symptoms, psychosis and substance use, rather than via a shared psychopathological process

Young people\u27s lived experience expertise: Insights from the DigiCAT project to develop a counterfactual analysis tool for mental health data

\ua9 2025 The Author(s). JCPP Advances published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.Background: Lived experience (LE) expertise is increasingly recognised as a vital component in mental health research. In our project to develop a digital tool for counterfactual analysis (DigiCAT), with an emphasis on researching active ingredients for adolescent mental health, we incorporated LE expertise across the lifecycle of tool development and dissemination. Methods: We consulted young person advisory groups (YPAGs; aged 11–18 years old) across three project phases—Discovery, Prototyping, and Dissemination—using structured discussions, ranking exercises, and iterative feedback loops to shape research priorities, tool design and user tutorials, and dissemination strategies of the tool. Results: The YPAGs advised on active ingredients and features of such ingredients that existing research has not taken into account. Examples include young person advisory group (YPAG) suggestions to prioritise research in social media, peer relationships, and teacher-student relationships. We incorporated these suggestions as illustrative examples in our tutorial paper introducing DigiCAT to our target audience, to demonstrate how insights from YPAGs can inform the use of the tool in research, by guiding areas of study. These areas were also prioritised in our own empirical analyses using the tool. Additionally, the YPAG contributed practical guidance on how to effectively involve youth LE experts in both research and digital tool development processes. Conclusions: The integration of LE expertise fundamentally shaped the development of our tutorial paper, influencing both its instructional components and its broader discussion of applications in mental health research. This project highlights the value of embedding LE perspectives into research guidance for software use, offering a model for future mental health and digital innovation initiatives

Violent Poly‐Victimization: The Longitudinal Patterns of Physical and Emotional Victimization Throughout Adolescence (11–17 Years)

In this study, we aimed to characterize developmental patterns of poly‐victimization in a normative sample of adolescents by applying longitudinal latent class analysis. Using the four most recent waves of data from the Zurich Project on the Social Development of Children and Youths (z‐proso), we identified three classes, or separate groups, of youths with distinct patterns of victimization from age 11 to 17. The largest class represented young people who were least likely to be victimized in any way and at any time. The two smaller groups represented different types of poly‐victimization—a non‐parental and a long‐term parental victimization group. Adolescents in the two groups differed both in the number as well as type of victimization that they experienced at different times. Moreover, class membership also had implications for different mental health outcomes

Shaping aggressive personality in adolescence: Exploring cross-lagged relations between aggressive thoughts, aggressive behaviour and self-control

Aggressive ideations can be defined as thoughts, daydreams or fantasies of harming another. They feature intheoretical models of aggressive behaviour causation and are used in violence risk assessments. Little isknown, however, about long term relations between aggressive ideations, aggressive behaviour and relatedvariables such as self-control. We examined cross-lagged associations between these variables in the most recenttwo waves of the Zurich project on social development (z-proso) when the participants were aged 15 and 17. Wefound that aggressive ideations were highly stable across this time span. The only significant cross-lagged effectswere between aggressive behaviour at age 15 and self-control and aggressive ideations at age 17. Results are consis-tent with the strength model of self-control in which changes in specific self-controlled behaviour can producegeneralised changes in self-control. They are also consistent with the hypothesis that aggressive ideations aremore a reaction to or a reflection of shared causes with, rather than a cause of, aggressive behaviour. Future studiesshould aim to integrate measurements across short and long time scales in order to further understand the causalinteractions between aggressive ideations and behaviours as they play out across at the state and trait level