The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter最新文献

The problems caused by excessive alcohol consumption begin at a young age. So do, tragically, overdoses from drugs, and increasingly, drug addiction in general. In Japan, it's illegal to use drugs. But a recent study there has found that what really contributes to abstinence is residential treatment (something many parents wish they could afford for their children) and the cessation has resulted in increased abstinence rates from drugs in general.

Child and adolescent clinicians in the United States have to be paying attention to what has happened to gender medicine in the United Kingdom. The highly respected service at the Tavistock Clinic has come under intense criticism — confusing as that may be — and in April Hilary Cass released her report to the UK's National Health Service expressing concern for gender medicine, saying it is “built on shaky foundations.” Coupled with recent lawsuits against the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and gender-affirming care, the standard in the United States, clinicians are left pondering their next steps. An editorial in the British Medical Journal following the release of the Cass Report gives a balanced summation. (For the report, go to Download the Final Report). The editorial is subtitled “an opportunity to unite behind evidence informed care in gender medicine.”

About 11% of 12th graders have used delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in the past year, according to an analysis of last year's Monitoring the Future Study, which is conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, children from the ages of 6 to 12 should be getting 9–12 hours of sleep every night (Paruthi et al., 2016). However, many children are not getting enough sleep. The National Survey of Children's Health found that 38.4% of 6–12-year-olds in the United States had short sleep duration according to parental report (Wheaton & Claussen, 2021). This sleep deficit may increase with age, as the CDC found that around six in 10 middle schoolers and seven in 10 high schoolers self-report not getting the recommended amount of sleep on school nights (Wheaton et al., 2018). In addition to age, this difference in the percentage of kids with insufficient sleep may also be due to the differences in informant between those two surveys. One study found that while both children and parents overestimated total sleep time compared with the polysomnography, the child report was slightly more accurate (Combs et al., 2019).

Last October, an Indiana woman was charged with two felonies for her infant's death related to co-sleeping, after she had lost another infant to the same cause in 2020. The rationale for her indictment was that she should have been cognizant of the risk. This was also the case with an Ohio woman early this year for the same set of tragedies, and a FL woman in January as well, also two infants. A quick search yields a concerning number of these cases, and indeed the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) notes that approximately 3500 infants die annually of sleep related factors (Moon et al, 2022).

A 12-year-old boy presented for psychiatric assessment with a chief complaint of “fire setting.” The patient was reluctant to speak, however, his caregiver stated that he had set a fire in the basement of his home while the rest of the family were asleep. They were alerted due to the smoke alarm going off and were able to hurriedly contain the situation. The patient had a history of physical and emotional abuse from parents and was residing with his legal guardian, his maternal aunt.

Parents may be confused when they first get the news that their child has a problem, especially one that requires medication. On the one hand, they may — and should — be relieved to know that there is a cure for their child's suffering. On the other hand, it is never good news to find out something is “wrong” with your child.

That there is a strong relationship between psychosis and self-harm is not in question. However, most of the research conducted has been on individuals already diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. So researchers wanted to look at whether self-harm can be a marker for future psychosis.

In January the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) announced that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for speech and language delay and disorders in children 5 years or younger who don't show any signs or symptoms of delays.