Kerri L. Kim

The alarming rates and pervasiveness of suicidal and self‐destructive behaviors (e.g., non‐suicidal self‐injury) among young sexual minorities represent a major public health concern. We set out to examine whether an empirically driven treatment for suicide and self‐harm, dialectical behavior therapy for adolescents (DBT‐A), provides benefits for adolescents who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ). LGBQ adolescents (n = 16) were compared with non‐LGBQ peers (n = 23). Psychological measures were collected before and after participation in a comprehensive DBT‐A program. LGBQ participants demonstrated significant improvements in emotion regulation, depression, borderline symptoms, and coping strategies; changes were comparable to their heterosexual peers.

1 Background Despite gains made in the study of childhood anxiety, differential diagnosis remains challenging because of indistinct boundaries between disorders and high comorbidity. This is certainly true for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) as they share multiple cognitive processes (e.g., rumination, intolerance of uncertainty, and increased attention to threat). Disentangling such cognitive characteristics and, subsequently, underlying mechanisms could serve to inform assessment and treatment practices, and improve prognoses. 2 Methods The current study sought to compare the cognitive performance (working memory, visuospatial memory, planning ability/efficiency, and cognitive flexibility), indexed by the Cambridge Neuropsychological Automated Battery (CANTAB) among three nonoverlapping groups of youth: (1) those diagnosed with OCD (n = 28), (2) those diagnosed with GAD, not OCD (n = 34), and (3) typically‐developing controls (TDC) (n = 65). 3 Results Results showed that OCD and GAD youth demonstrated neurocognitive deficits in planning ability/efficiency, cognitive flexibility, and visual processing when compared to TDC, with potential diagnostic specificity such that youth with GAD or OCD had unique deficits compared to TDC and to one another. Specifically, youth with OCD demonstrated significantly impaired planning ability compared to youth in the GAD and TDS groups, whereas youth with GAD demonstrated greater cognitive inflexibility and delayed visual processing compared to youth in the OCD and TDC groups. 4 Conclusions Future studies should expand upon these findings with more comprehensive assessment of cognitive functioning by including self‐ and parent‐report forms, and neuroimaging to link behavioral findings with subjective ratings and neurocircuitry. Altogether, data can then inform future assessment and treatment targets.

To better delineate the unique correlates of self‐injurious behaviors (SIB), psychiatric profiles of mutually exclusive groups of adolescents who made a suicide attempt (SA) versus those engaged in nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) were examined. Contrary to hypotheses, the NSSI group endorsed earlier onsets of SIB and suicidal ideation (SI), as well as higher rates of depression and anxiety compared with their SA counterparts. Future work is warranted to understand the role of SI, including duration of SI and anxiety in the development of NSSI, and to identify risk and resiliency factors useful in predicting an adolescent's SIB status.

Pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) rates have notably increased over the past three decades. Given the significant morbidity and mortality associated with BD, efforts are needed to identify factors useful in earlier detection to help address this serious public health concern. Sleep is particularly important to consider given the sequelae of disrupted sleep on normative functioning and that sleep is included in diagnostic criteria for both Major Depressive and Manic Episodes. Here, we examine one component of sleep—i.e., circadian phase preference with the behavioral construct of morningness/eveningness (M/E). In comparing 30 BD and 45 typically developing control (TDC) participants, ages 7–17 years, on the Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC), no between-group differences emerged. Similar results were found when comparing three groups (BD−ADHD; BD+ADHD; TDC). Consistent with data available on circadian phase preference in adults with BD, however, we found that BD adolescents, ages 13 years and older, endorsed significantly greater eveningness compared to their TDC peers. While the current findings are limited by reliance on subjective report and the high-rate of comorbid ADHD among the BD group, this finding that BD teens demonstrate an exaggerated shift towards eveningness than would be developmentally expected is important. Future studies should compare the circadian rhythms across the lifespan for individuals diagnosed with BD, as well as identify the point at which BD youth part ways with their healthy peers in terms of phase preference. In addition, given our BD sample was overall euthymic, it may be that M/E is more state vs. trait specific in latency age youth. Further work would benefit from assessing circadian functioning using a combination of rating forms and laboratory-based measures. Improved understanding of sleep in BD may identify behavioral targets for inclusion in prevention and intervention protocols.

While controversial and often confounded with other forms of psychopathology, recent studies have shown that bipolar disorder (BD) is on the rise in children and adolescents. Research has made important strides in advancing our understanding of the phenomenology, neural underpinnings and treatment outcomes for BD youths. However, there is an increasing need to unite these domains to identify potential neural effects and predictors of treatment outcome. Pavuluri et al. have conducted such a study, evaluating the neural effects of divalproex or risperidone for pediatric BD. The future is likely to bring more of such studies, potentially resulting in a biomarker augmented approach to the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric BD.