ADHD

While some mental health services for adolescents allow self-referral, many require parental involvement. There is increasing evidence that working with the family and the child is important if only to increase compliance with medication and to tackle any comorbid difficulties.

Infant, or developmental, psychiatry is a subspecialty of child and adolescent psychiatry that focuses on the promotion of mental health in infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families through the consultation, assessment, and treatment of clinical problems.

Current treatments for autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are useful in some cases, but have little enduring impact. This had lead to many parents seeking nonconventional treatments that often border on quackery.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in girls may be more persistent than originally thought and may also be associated with a variety of behavioral and mental health consequences such as eating disorders, depression, and substance abuse.

New findings in epidemiology, developmental psychiatry, and neuroscience offer the opportunity for a new perspective on the problems of juvenile delinquency and bring to bear the insights of modern psychiatry in the treatment and successful rehabilitation of juvenile offenders.

Treating Parkinson disease with dopamine receptor agonists puts patients at risk for a number of symptoms over and above classic motor disturbances.

Because personality is shaped by experiences during childhood and adolescence, it is likely that mental disorders occurring during these years may have an influence on personality development.

The prevalence and debilitating nature of some of the personality disorders has impeded the study of psychopharmacology in these conditions. However, important advances have been made in the last several years.

The evidence showing a relationship between mental disorders in childhood and adulthood has increased in the last several decades.

The psychiatric community has a need for diagnostic and predictive tests. Some recent techniques have just become available for clinical care.

A House committee is seeking to prohibit FDA members who have a financial interest in a company proposing a new drug (or in its competitors) from voting on new drug approvals from that company.

autism, mirror neuron defect

The use of psychiatric medications in children, including antidepressants (such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and drugs used to manage attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, are continuing to be reviewed by the FDA.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs for children won't require . restrictive black box labeling, as the FDA has reversed its earlier ruling.

A second opinion on the need for new warnings on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs from the FDA advisory committee contradicts The Pediatric Advisory Committee recommendation.

Pediatric psychosomatic research shows that emotional, behavioral, and psychiatric symptoms are found more often in children and adolescents with chronic illnesses than in healthy children.

Delirium must be diagnosed accurately, prevented, and treated because of its pervasiveness and the associated risks of morbidity and mortality.

There is a tendency to avoid psychiatric medications during pregnancy, but the high prevalence of psychiatric disorders in pregnant women means that women and their physicians must make impromptu decisions regarding the initiation or continuation of drug therapy.

ADHD, epilepsy, depression

Each year, more than 2 million individuals in the United States sustain a traumatic brain injury. Increased vigilance for previously undiagnosed or incidental TBIs in general mental health populations may lead to more effective clinical management.

The recent evolution of neuropsychiatry/behavioral neurology as a subspecialty represents a paradigmatic shift regarding the responsibility of psychiatrists in diagnosing and managing behavioral disorders with concomitant and demonstrable brain pathology such as dementia or head injury. This authors define the clinical usefulness of electroencephalography in evaluating neuropsychiatric disorders.

Sleep-associated movement disorders are common in the general population. When patients complain of sleep disturbance, psychiatrists should consider,and question for, features of nocturnal movement disorder.

cognitive enhancement, cosmetic neurology

Parkinson disease, addictions, pathologic gambling

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental conditions in the general population, including in children and adolescents. Young people can present with a pattern of anxiety symptoms somewhat different from that typically seen in adults. One of the most common aspects of this difference is that children (especially younger ones) may not report overt worries or fears, but instead manifest pronounced physical symptoms.

Pavuluri MN, Birmaher B, Naylor MW. Pediatric bipolar disorder: a review of the past 10 years. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2005; 44:846-871.

There has been increasing interest in the overlap between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and substance use disorders. Pharmacotherapeutic treatment of ADHD in children reduces the risk for later SUD in adolescence and adulthood. In contrast, medication treatment of substance-abusing adolescents with ADHD does not reduce the SUD. Diagnostic and treatment strategies for adults with ADHD plus SUDs are discussed.

Research Review: Update on Child and Adolescent ADHD

sleep apnea

Published a decade ago, the original National Comorbidity Survey focused largely on anxiety and depression. In an exclusive interview, the survey's designer, Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D., talks with Psychiatric Times about the just-published replication study, which found that the combined lifetime prevalence of impulse control disorders is higher than that for either mood or substance use disorders.