Child and adolescent psychiatric disorders in a public service over seventy years

The entire sample of N=45554 patients attending the child and adolescent psychiatric service of the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland between 1921 and 1990 was analyzed with regard to age, sex, and diagnoses. Data were based on annual reports of the institution for the period between 1921 and 1978. From 1979 onwards, electronically stored data on each patient were available. ICD-9 diagnoses were applied between 1979 and 1987. The ICD-10 system was introduced in 1988. The total administrative prevalence rate varied between 0.15 and 0.40 percent with an increasing trend over time. On the average, boys outnumbered girls by a sex ratio of 2:1. The age distribution showed peaks at 8 to 9 years and during adolescence. The distributions of the most common diagnoses showed remarkable differences over time. It is assumed that changes in diagnostic categories rather than changes in true prevalence rates play a major role in the latter tren

The family history of children with elective mutism: a research report

The family history was studied in children with elective mutism. The samples comprised a series of N = 38 children with elective mutism and a control group of N = 31 children with a similar behavioural phenotype, i.e., the combination of an emotional disorder and a developmental disorder of articulation or expressive language. Interviews were performed with the respective mothers. There was a clear excess of the personality trait of taciturnity in first-, second-, and third-degree relatives. Although mutism was reported almost exclusively in the group of relatives of children that manifested elective mutism, the differences between the two samples were not significant probably due to low frequencies. Disorders of speech and language were quite common in the relatives of subjects in both samples. Psychiatric disorders were more frequently reported in the families with an electively mute child. The study lends some evidence for the assumption that genetic factors may play a role in the etiology of elective mutis

Behavioral evaluation of GH treatment in short statured children and adolescents: Findings from a pilot study

A cohort of 93 short-statured children and adolescents undergoing GH treatment were evaluated with respect to behavior, emotions, and attitudes. The sample consisted of patients suffering from either idiopathic GH deficiency or neurosecretory dysfunction (no.=47), Turner syndrome (no.=20), organic GH deficiency due to brain tumors (no.=10), or other etiologies (no.=16). The Child Behavior Checklist (CB-CL) together with a brief Evaluation of Treatment Questionnaire (ETQ) were filled out by the patient's parents. These evaluations were performed at onset and after 12 and 24 months of GH treatment, respectively. There was a highly significant but clinically small decline of behavioral abnormalities over time and parents saw major benefits of GH treatment in the total group of patients. The behavioral changes over time were independent of diagnostic category, gender, height velocity, puberty and ag

Capturing regional differences in flood vulnerability improves flood loss estimation

Flood vulnerability is quantified by loss models which are developed using either empirical or synthetic approaches. In reality, processes influencing flood risk are stochastic and loss predictions bear significant uncertainty, especially due to differences in vulnerability across exposed objects and regions. However, many state-of-the-art flood loss models are deterministic, i.e., they do not account for data and model uncertainty. The Bayesian Data-Driven Synthetic (BDDS) model was one of the first approaches that used empirical data to reduce the prediction errors at object-level and enhance the reliability of synthetic flood loss models. However, the BDDS model does not account for regional differences in vulnerability which may result in over-/under-estimation of losses in some regions. In order to overcome this limitation, this study introduces a hierarchical parameterization of the BDDS model which enhances synthetic flood loss model predictions by quantifying regional differences in vulnerability. The hierarchical parameterization makes optimal use of the process information contained in the overall data set for the various regional applications, so that it is particularly suitable for cases in which only a small amount of empirical data is available. The implementation and performance of the hierarchical parametrization is demonstrated with the Multi-Colored Manual (MCM) loss functions and empirical damage dataset from the UK consisting of residential buildings from the regions Appleby, Carlisle, Kendal and Cockermouth that suffered losses during the 2015 flood event. The developed model improves prediction accuracy of flood loss compared to MCM by reducing the absolute error and bias by at least 23 and 90%, respectively. The model reliability in terms of hit rate (i.e., the probability that the observed value lies in the 90% high density interval of predictions) is 88% for residential buildings from the same regions used for calibration and 73% for residential buildings from new regions. The approach is of high practical relevance for all regions where only limited amounts of empirical flood loss data is available

Decision-making on an explicit risk-taking task in preadolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Summary.: Inappropriate risk-taking and disadvantageous decision-making have been described as major behavioural characteristics of patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However these behaviours are difficult to measure in laboratory contexts and recent studies have yielded inconsistent results which might be related to task characteristics. The present study adopted the Game of Dice Task, a test procedure in which risks are made explicit and the load on working memory is minimal. As a result, preadolescents with ADHD (N = 23) made significantly more risky choices and suffered major losses of money compared to normal controls (N = 24) but only when they played the game a second time. Differences in risk-taking correlated significantly with hyperactivity as rated by parents and with inhibitory control, but not with working memory performance. The results are discussed in the context of current theories of ADH

Behavioral and emotional problems reported by parents for ages 6 to 17 in a Swiss epidemiological study

In an epidemiological sample of children aged 6 to 17 a total of 1964 parents responded to the Child Behavior Check List (CBCL). A subgroup of 399 parents were interviewed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC). The mean syndrome scale scores in the various sex/age groups were in the lower range of several international studies using the CBCL. Effect analyses revealed sex to be more important than nationality (indigenous vs. immigrant) and age. All effects had to be considered as being small. Convergence between syndrome scales of the CBCL and interview-derived DSMIII-R diagnoses was good for three major groups of disorder

Follow-up studies of anorexia nervosa: a review of four decades of outcome research

In 1983 we presented a systematic analysis of the available literature on the course of anorexia nervosa (Steinhausen & Glanville, 1983 a). The survey was based on 45 English and German language studies published between 1953 and 1981. During the past decade there has been a striking increase of publications related to eating disorders in general. This pertains as well to follow-up studies on anorexia nervosa. In addition to studies compiled in our previous report, we were able to locate another 22 follow-up studies published in major English and German language journals between 1981 and 198