Psychiatry training in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability: Ongoing gaps and emerging opportunities

Children, adolescents, and adults with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability experience high rates of co-occurring psychiatric conditions throughout their lifetime. However, there is a shortage of psychiatrists to treat these populations. We evaluated how much education psychiatrists-in-training receive on how to care for individuals with autism spectrum disorder/intellectual disability. We found that in many psychiatry programs, residents receive limited training experiences in autism spectrum disorder/intellectual disability involving lectures and patient contact and that psychiatry program directors would benefit from more resources to strengthen education in autism spectrum disorder/intellectual disability

Mood Disorders in Mothers of Children on the Autism Spectrum Are Associated with Higher Functioning Autism

Mood disorders occur more frequently in family members of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) than in the general population. There may be associations between maternal mood disorder history patterns and specific ASD phenotypes. We therefore examined the relationship between maternal mood disorders and child autism spectrum disorders in 998 mother-child dyads enrolled in a national online autism registry and database. Mothers of children with ASD completed online questionnaires addressing their child’s ASD as well as their own mood disorder history. In multivariate logistic regression models of ASD diagnoses, the odds of an Asperger disorder versus autistic disorder diagnosis were higher among those children whose mothers had a lifetime history of bipolar disorder (OR 2.11, CI 1.20, 3.69) or depression (OR 1.62, CI 1.19, 2.19). Further, maternal mood disorder onset before first pregnancy was associated with higher odds (OR 2.35, CI 1.48, 3.73) of an Asperger versus autism diagnosis among this sample of children with ASD. These data suggest that differences in maternal mood disorder history may be associated with ASD phenotype in offspring

Global scale ECHO Autism model enhancing healthcare for females with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during their transition into adulthood

International audienc

Supplementary Material, AUT689330_Lay_Abstract – Self-injurious behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorder enrolled in the Study to Explore Early Development

<p>Supplementary Material, AUT689330_Lay_Abstract for Self-injurious behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorder enrolled in the Study to Explore Early Development by Gnakub Norbert Soke, Steven A Rosenberg, Cordelia Robinson Rosenberg, Roma A Vasa, Li-Ching Lee and Carolyn DiGuiseppi in Autism</p

Attention bias toward threat in pediatric anxiety disorders

Objective: To examine attention bias toward threat faces in a large sample of anxiety-disordered youths using a well- established visual probe task. Method: Study participants included 101 children and adolescents (ages 7Y18 years) with generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, and/or separation anxiety disorder enrolled in a multisite anxiety treatment study. Nonanxious youths (n = 51; ages 9Y18 years) were recruited separately. Participants were administered a computerized visual probe task that presents pairs of faces portraying threat (angry), positive (happy), and neutral expressions. They pressed a response key to indicate the spatial location of a probe that replaced one of the faces on each trial. Attention bias scores were calculated from response times to probes for each emotional face type. Results: Compared to healthy youths, anxious participants demonstrated a greater attention bias toward threat faces. This threat bias in anxious patients did not significantly vary across the anxiety disorders. There was no group difference in attention bias toward happy faces. Conclusions: These results suggest that pediatric anxiety disorders are associated with an attention bias toward threat. Future research may examine the manner in which cognitive bias in anxious youths changes with treatment

Effects of yohimbine and hydrocortisone on panic symptoms, autonomic responses, and attention to threat in healthy adults

Rationale: research in rodents and non-human primates implicates the noradrenergic system and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis in stress, anxiety, and attention to threat. Few studies examine how these two neurochemical systems interact to influence anxiety and attention in humans. Objective: the objective of this paper is to examine the effects of exogenous yohimbine and hydrocortisone, as well as their combination (Y?+?H), on panic symptoms and attention to social threat cues. Methods: thirty-two healthy adults underwent a pharmacological challenge in which they were blindly randomized to either yohimbine, hydrocortisone, Y?+?H, or placebo. Thirty minutes after drug infusion, attention to threat was measured using the dot probe task, a visual attention task that presents angry, happy, and neutral faces and measures the degree of attention allocated towards or away from the emotional faces. Panic and autonomic measures were assessed before and 30 min after drug infusion. Results: there was a significant increase in panic symptoms in the yohimbine and Y?+?H groups, but not in the hydrocortisone or placebo groups. Yohimbine resulted in a greater increase in panic symptoms than Y?+?H. On the dot probe task, the placebo group exhibited an attention bias to angry faces, whereas this bias was absent after yohimbine. When collapsing across groups, increased panic symptoms was associated with less attention to angry faces. Conclusions: exogenous hydrocortisone may attenuate noradrenergic-induced panic symptoms. The inverse relationship between panic symptoms and attention to angry faces extends prior research demonstrating attention modulation by stressful conditions. <br/