Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

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Custody disputes often produce anxiety for all involved. Whether you are a treating child psychiatrist or custody evaluator, it is imperative to have a clear idea of your role.

The articles in this Special Report reinforce the lesson that children come with parents. This is one of first lessons that I teach my residents: you can’t work with a kid in a vacuum. Parents who do not feel some connection with a caregiver will not bring their child to treatment or follow the recommendations of the treatment team.

In a childhood obesity article, the JAMA authors suggest "involvement of state protective services . . . including placement into foster care in carefully selected situations" as an alternative to treatment at newly established pediatric surgical weight loss programs. Do you agree?

Expansion of age-appropriate developmental psycho-therapeutic services must become a top public health priority to make these treatments more widely available to young children and to capture the potential greater benefit of the earliest possible intervention for mental disorders.

Is ADHD in a child foreshadowed by ADHD in other family members? Have acute-phase treatments for major depression been found to be effective in children and teens? These questions and more in this quiz.

This table provides links to many valuable resources for child and adolescent psychiatry. A list of Web sites, books, organizations, and pivotal articles on ADHD and other topics.

In essence, screen media constitute neurologically potent, arousing input to the developing brain. Unlike conventional toxins, their effects are mediated by sense organs. However, they have demonstrable effects on brain activity, and on behavior and function.

This is both an exciting and challenging time to be a child and adolescent psychiatrist. New findings are changing our knowledge of childhood psychopathology. This Special Report discusses current developments in diagnosis, treatments, and problems for children and adolescents.

A 3-year study involving over 3,000 patients used motivational interviewing to counsel adolescents about staying away from potentially violent and alcohol-related situations. It was found that these brief sessions “reduced by half the chances that teenagers would experience peer violence or problems due to drinking.”