The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter最新文献

The typical conundrum with cannabis use by adolescents and first episode psychosis — which came first? — was displaced by Steven Batki, M.D., in a plenary session at the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders (CCSAD) in September. Bakti, who is a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco Weill Institute for Neurosciences, presented his conclusions allowing the audience of some 1,000 to ask questions as he went along.

Motivation has long been considered key to sending substance use disorder (SUD) patients in the direction of recovery. But how do you motivate an adolescent, to whom motivational approaches may feel like a call to battle — or even worse, an excuse for running away? Lauren Sbarbaro, Ph.D., a psychologist licensed in alcohol and drug treatment who trained at Hazelden, shared some insights with attendees at the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders (CCSAD) in Hyannis, Massachusetts last week.

I attended a recent webinar, “Beyond the hype: What research tells us about social media use in youth mental health” (August 2024), expecting the panelists to focus on the adverse effects of screen time. Interestingly, they offered a different perspective, one of nuanced findings in a young area of research, the suggestion to “take the panic level down” and still recognize risk factors (Schleider, 2024), and how social media might be a powerful tool for promoting positive mental health in youth.

Parents often struggle with discipline as well as how best to support their children's social and emotional growth. Unfortunately, many pediatricians, nurses, teachers, and other professionals involved in the lives of young children and their families lack the formal training and/or time to address parenting questions and concerns. And, although evidence-based parenting programs do exist, their impact is limited by low rates of uptake. Logistical barriers to implementation and workforce shortages limit their availability, and even when available, families often face numerous obstacles to enrolling in and completing programs. From a public health perspective, lack of accessibility and low exposure rates severely limit their potential for reducing the prevalence of behavioral and emotional problems and for promoting psychological wellbeing.

While distinct diagnoses, the behavioral presentation of ritualistic/repetitive behaviors seen in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can present similarly. This results in difficulty with accurate diagnosis and implementation of evidence-based treatments. OCD is characterized by prolonged and recurrent unwanted thoughts, known as obsessions, which cause a feeling of intense anxiety or distress. As a result, people with OCD perform repetitive behaviors known as compulsions to help alleviate distress. ASD is characterized as a developmental disorder causing persistent challenges associated with social communication, restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB), and impairment in functioning. While the definitions are distinct, accurate conceptualization is not always clear. The picture can become even more complex with comorbidities. To parse these behaviors apart, we can consider the course of the behavior and assess the function. With better ability to differentiate, we can have a clearer picture of how to support the youth and family.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and its adaptation for adolescents (DBT-A) provide evidence-based tools for individuals with chronic emotion dysregulation and their families (Linehan, 2015; Miller et al., 2007). Teens with emotion dysregulation struggle to understand, label, and accept their emotions; they are frequently unable to modulate the intensity of their emotions to match the goals of the present context. No matter how much emotionally-dysregulated teens and their families may wish it were so, emotion regulation does not include getting rid of emotions. Why not? We need emotions for survival, as emotions serve essential functions: to motivate us for action and to communicate to ourselves and others. Rather than eliminating emotions, emotion regulation aims to help individuals understand their own emotions, decrease emotional vulnerability and suffering, and change unwanted emotions. This article presents “Check the Facts,” a DBT skill for helping individuals with emotion dysregulation effectively change unwanted emotions. We share a handout that we adapted from DBT with step-by-step tips based on our experience treating adolescents with chronic emotion dysregulation co-occurring with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)/anxiety disorders.

Preventing child maltreatment can result in a reduction in suicide and mental disorders, research has found. The link between childhood maltreatment and adult depression has been known for some time, but the first study published has shown that this maltreatment causes mental disorders and suicide. The study took into account genetic and environmental confounding. For the study, maltreatment was defined as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional, or neglect before at 18.