New Drugs, Legal Highs, and Big Risks: A Review of Novel Intoxicants

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Substance Abuse

Get high with no hassles! Try our potent herbal blend! Relax with soothing bath salts! Safe and legal! Popular among individuals seeking to avoid social and legal consequences of drug use, a bewildering array of synthetic intoxicants and formerly obscure ethnobotanicals have surged to prominence in the past decade. A wider variety of intoxicants is avai

Pharmacotherapy for Substance Abuse

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Substance Abuse

Treating substance abuse is difficult whether the patient is young or old. Although one might hope that the shorter period of abuse seen in teens would make the disorder less entrenched, the data shows otherwise: addiction is a stubborn disorder with a long term, relapsing, and remitting course (Simkin DR and Grenoble S, Child Adolesc Psychiatric Clin N

Hoarding and ADHD Linked

Topics: ADHD | Child Psychiatry

Failure to Launch Syndrome

Topics: Child Psychiatry

There was a time not too long ago when young adults who lived at home were seen as somehow developmentally stunted and “failures to launch.” But the Great Recession and changing social norms have diminished much of the negative stigma associated with living with parents into adulthood. In fact, a whole new vocabulary has been built around young adul

Medication and Transitional Age Youth

Topics: Child Psychiatry

At first glance, treatment of the young adult seems comparatively easy: their metabolisms have slowed to the normal adult pace, most medications are FDA approved, and they (finally) tend to present with symptoms of just one or two diagnoses at a time. However, nature gets in the way, and the normal developmental tasks of transitional age youth (TAY) mak

Helping Your Patients Succeed in College

Topics: Child Psychiatry

Programs to Help Transition Patients to Adulthood

Topics: Child Psychiatry

Mid-Teens Is Peak Age for Prescription Drug Abuse

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Research Updates | Substance Abuse

Video Game Addiction

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Cultural Competence | Free Articles

The Use of Rating Scales in Diagnostic Assessment of Children

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Diagnostic Testing

Rating scales have been gaining favor in diagnostic assessment of children with psychiatric and/or neurodevelopmental disorders. Many children have trouble talking directly about their behavior, and rating scales can often help clinicians fill in the blanks. While they have their benefits, misuse or overreliance on rating scales can interfere with the a

Selected Diagnostic and Rating Scales

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Diagnostic Testing

A comprehensive table of selected diagnostic and rating scales. Click to view the PDF..

Is Frequency a Good Indicator of Problem Drinking in Adolescents?

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Research Updates | Substance Abuse

Study Shows Link Between TFA Intake and ADHD

Topics: ADHD | Child Psychiatry | Research Updates

What you Need to Know About Callous-Unemotional Traits and Disruptive Behavioral Disorders

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Personality Disorders

Recently, researchers in the field of conduct disorder (CD) have proposed including a specifier to the diagnosis of CD in DSM-5 based on the presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits. Where does this idea come from, what is the evidence to support it, and why is it controversial? (Alphabet soup alert to readers: be forewarned that I will be using a lo

How Effective Are the Newest Antipsychotics?

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Free Articles | Personality Disorders

Four new antipsychotics are beginning to gain some traction in the adult market. To be absolutely clear, among these only paliperidone (Invega) has been approved for use in children and adolescents (those age 12 and older). None of the other medications have been tested in this age group. But for those of us who see transitional age youth to whom we pre

Does Stealing in Childhood Predict Future Psychiatric Illness?

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Personality Disorders

Most Kids’ Chest Pain Does Not Have Cardiac Causes

Topics: Child Psychiatry | Personality Disorders

The Psychopharmacology of Anxiety Treatment in Children and Adolescents

Topics: Antipsychotics | Anxiety Disorder | Benzodiazepines | Child Psychiatry

Anxiety disorders are common in young people, affecting 4%–7% of children (Ipser JC et al, Cochrane Review 2010;Issue 6), and can cause a plethora of symptoms and impairments—from aggression and suicide to social withdrawal, school failure, and poor physical health. While OCD and PTSD have been addressed in previous issues (see CCPR, June 2011 and C

Effective Psychotherapies for Childhood Anxiety

Topics: Antipsychotics | Anxiety Disorder | Benzodiazepines | Child Psychiatry

Anxiety disorders are prevalent and heterogeneous. They include generalized anxiety—characterized by excessive worry; panic disorder—characterized by an exaggerated physical and emotional fear response; and the various phobias of social interaction (social phobia), of being separated from a caregiver (separation anxiety), of speaking (selective muti

Treating Anxiety in Children and Adolescents

Topics: Antipsychotics | Anxiety Disorder | Benzodiazepines | Child Psychiatry