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Child Psychology News as of Jul 29, 2010
Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative produces long-term gains
Wed, 30 Jun 2010 06:22:06 - Pacific Time
Lyricist Johnny Mercer may have stumbled onto a significant therapy when he cajoled his audience to “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative” and “don’t mess with Mr. In-between.” The latest findings on the long-term effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) suggest that it has positive effects for children up to 13 years after they first receive treatment. CBT teaches individuals to reassess their negative thoughts and beliefs to try to instill a more positive set of judgments. There are some additional benefits to individual CBT over group-based approaches, but overall the findings suggest that practitioners working with children can be flexible about which treatment approach to adopt and remain confident about the chances of success. The research, due to be published in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, involved young people that originally participated in randomized experiments investigating the effectiveness of CBT (for children with anxiety and phobic disorders) over a decade ago. CBT itself is described in more detail elsewhere on Prevention Action (See: The value of looking on the brighter side). At the time of those original experiments, all of the children had a diagnosed anxiety disorder. A common behavior adopted by clinically anxious children (and adults) is the avoidance of situations that make them fearful. Avoidance can become extreme enough to interfere with day-to-day life. The CBT prescribed to participants of these trials relied on the principles of exposure therapy. This meant exposing participants to anxiety producing situations so that the therapist could teach them how to cope. Some participants received the treatment on an individual basis (ICBT); others attended group sessions with four to eight other children (GCBT). Both formats were standardized to ensure treatment integrity. They consisted of 10 to 12 sessions delivered by trained therapists. Wendy Silverman, a psychologist at Florida International University’s Child Anxiety and Phobia Program (CAPP), designed the program evaluation. The experiments demonstrated significant short-term reductions in symptoms of anxiety—both reported by parents and the individuals themselves—compared to control group children who did not receive CBT. A decade later, Silverman, with the help of a new team of researchers, tracked down many of the original participants to investigate whether the treatment gains observed all those years ago had been sustained. In all, 67 (out of 106) young people agreed to participate in the new assessment. They were now between 16 and 26 years old, having received CBT initially between 8 and 13 years earlier. The results were more than reassuring. The reduction in symptoms of anxiety (the target of the intervention) reported by Silverman in 1999 was sustained over the long term. Not only that, but CBT also had positive effects on other associated disorders such as depression and substance abuse. This was especially true for participants who had received individual treatment. But outcomes were also good for those who attended group sessions Read More...
Family therapy helps ease kids' stomach pain
Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:33:25 - Pacific Time
Doctors, the researchers say, need to recognize parents' role in how well a child is able to cope and function with this sort of pain. "Parent education and support for encouraging coping and wellness behaviors in their children may be an important aspect of working with these families," they write in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. So-called functional abdominal pain, which has no apparent physical cause, is a common problem among children, Dr. Rona L. Levy of the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues note. Drugs have little benefit in treating this type of stomach pain, they add, which can often persist into adulthood and may be related to irritable bowel syndrome. When parents respond in a concerned, fearful way to their children's reports of stomach problems and pain, Levy and her team say, this can make a child's symptoms worse. Examples of such "solicitous" responses might include letting the child stay home from school and bringing him or her gifts and treats. To investigate whether addressing how children and their parents cope with pain might help treat unexplained abdominal pain, Levy and her colleagues randomly assigned 200 parent-child pairs to a "Social Learning/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" group or an education support group. The children ranged in age from 7 to 17. The therapy group participated in three sessions that included relaxation training and discussion on how to move from unhelpful coping strategies to helpful approaches. In the education support group, parent-child pairs received the same amount of attention and time from therapists, but their sessions included information only on the anatomy and function of the gastrointestinal system and nutritional guidelines. While both groups showed improvements, children's "pain intensity" as reported by their parents and the severity of their stomach complaints as reported by both parents and kids improved more in the therapy group than in the education group. Children in the therapy group also showed greater increases in their ability to distract themselves and ignore their pain, while their parents responded in more appropriate ways to the child's pain. "Most importantly," the researchers say, many of these differences were maintained 6 months after the intervention. Based on their findings, the researchers think that referral of kids with unexplained stomach pain and their parents to trained behavior therapists "may be appropriate in some situations." This study is available in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, online March 9, 2010. Read More...
Teens With More Screen Time Have Lower-Quality Relationships
Wed, 3 Mar 2010 05:09:07 - Pacific Time
Teens who spend more time watching television or using computers appear to have poorer relationships with their parents and peers, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Over the past 20 years, teens have used an ever-expanding array of screen-based tools for communication and entertainment, according to background information in the article. "The availability and attractiveness of screen time activities has provoked excitement about the opportunities afforded by these options, as well as concern about whether these displace other activities that are important for health and development," the authors write. "One area of interest is how screen time may affect the quality of relationships with family and friends." Rosalina Richards, Ph.D., of the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, and colleagues studied 3,043 adolescents age 14 to 15 in 2004. The teens completed a confidential questionnaire about their free-time habits, as well as an assessment of their attachment to parents and peers. Overall, the more time teens spent watching television or playing on a computer, the more likely they were to report low attachment to parents (in other words, difficulty forming a relationship or emotional bond). The risk of having low attachment to parents increased 4 percent for every hour spent viewing television and 5 percent for every hour spent playing on a computer. Conversely, teens who spend more time reading and doing homework reported a higher level of attachment to parents. Read More...
Teen pot smokers at high risk of mental illness
Tue, 2 Mar 2010 06:23:16 - Pacific Time
Young people who use marijuana (cannabis) are at increased risk of suffering hallucinations, delusions or other reality-distorting "psychoses." And the more time that's passed since first use, the higher the risk. The findings from a study by Dr. John McGrath, of the Queensland Center for Mental Health Research in Wacol, Australia, and colleagues confirm previous smaller studies that have suggested that pot smoking may be linked to mental illness. The study, appearing in the Archives of General Psychiatry, involved roughly 3,800 people born in Brisbane between 1981 and 1984, who were followed up at age 5, 14 and 21 years. When they were 20 years old on average, researchers asked them about marijuana use and assessed their mental health. About 18 percent of the group said they smoked marijuana for three or fewer years, 16 percent admitted smoking pot for four to five years and 14 percent for six or more years. A total of 65 participants had been formally diagnosed with a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, and 233 had hallucinated at least once. Compared with those who had never used marijuana, those who first smoked marijuana when they were 15 or younger were twice as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia or other psychotic illness, four times as likely to suffer delusions, and nearly three times as likely to suffer hallucinations. The association between marijuana use and psychotic symptoms remained true after the researchers analyzed 228 sibling pairs separately. "Our study is the first to look at siblings," McGrath noted. That allowed the team to limit the effect of other factors. "Put bluntly, it makes the findings stronger and more convincing," he said. So does pot smoking causes mental illness? It's not that simple, according to McGrath and colleagues. The young adults in their study who suffered hallucinations early in life, and were therefore more vulnerable to psychosis, were also more likely to report using marijuana early in life. Read More...
Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected
Wed, 3 Feb 2010 07:28:17 - Pacific Time
Kids who get bullied and snubbed by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a child's behavior that can lead to social rejection. The factors involve a child's inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals. In the United States, 10 to 13 percent of school-age kids experience some form of rejection by their peers. In addition to causing mental health problems, bullying and social isolation can increase the likelihood a child will get poor grades, drop out of school, or develop substance abuse problems, the researchers say. "It really is an under-addressed public health issue," said lead researcher Clark McKown of the Rush Neurobehavioral Center in Chicago. And the social skills children gain on the playground or elsewhere could show up later in life, according to Richard Lavoie, an expert in child social behavior who was not involved with the study. Unstructured playtime -- that is, when children interact without the guidance of an authority figure -- is when children experiment with the relationship styles they will have as adults, he said. Underlying all of this: "The number one need of any human is to be liked by other humans," Lavoie told LiveScience. "But our kids are like strangers in their own land." They don't understand the basic rules of operating in society and their mistakes are usually unintentional, he said. The studies are detailed in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. They were funded by the Dean and Rosemarie Buntrock Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation. Read More...
Kids of bipolar parents at risk for mental woes
Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:05:50 - Pacific Time
According to a new study, young children whose parents have bipolar disorder -- a mental illness marked by severe mood swings from depression to mania -- have an eight-fold higher risk of ADHD relative to young children of mentally healthy parents. They also have a six-fold high risk of having two or more mental disorders. The study, led by Dr. Boris Birmaher of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania compared 121 children ages 2 to 5 from 83 parents with bipolar disorder with 102 children of the same age from 65 comparison group parents with no history of bipolar disorder. The researchers excluded parents who had ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia, mental retardation, or mood disorders stemming from substance abuse, medications, or medical conditions. Their results, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, point to an elevated risk for ADHD and other psychiatric disorders among children of parents with bipolar disorder. And while only three children of bipolar parents had mood disorders, children of parents with bipolar disorder, especially those with ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder, had significantly more severe manic and depressive symptoms than comparison children. While diagnosing a preschooler with mania is a controversial endeavor, the investigators point to previous studies showing that preschoolers can indeed be diagnosed reliably with a psychiatric disorder, including bipolar disorder, as young as age 2. They acknowledge in their report that parents with bipolar disorder may witness behaviors in their own children that remind them of their own symptoms. Such watchful anxiety may be justifiable, as "The single largest risk factor for the development of bipolar disorder is a positive family history of the disorder," the investigators note. As with most medical issues, there is a benefit of early detection, Birmaher and colleagues note. Psychosocial interventions aimed at helping preschool children regulate their mood, they point out, have been found to be useful in preschoolers with disruptive behavior disorders and in older children with signs of mood disorders. Read More...
Many children 'hear voices'; most aren't bothered
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:22:37 - Pacific Time
Nearly 1 in 10 seven- to eight-year-olds hears voices that aren't really there, according to a new study. But most children who hear voices don't find them troubling or disruptive to their thinking, the study team found. "These voices in general have a limited impact in daily life," Agna A. Bartels-Velthuis of University Medical Center Groningen in The Netherlands wrote in an email to Reuters Health. And parents whose children hear voices should not be overly concerned, she added. "In most cases the voices will just disappear. I would advise them to reassure their child and to watch him or her closely." Up to 16 percent of mentally healthy children and teens may hear voices, the researchers note in the British Journal of Psychiatry. While hearing voices can signal a heightened risk of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders in later life, they add, the "great majority" of young people who have these experiences never become mentally ill.To further investigate how common these "auditory vocal hallucinations" are and whether they are associated with developmental and behavioral factors, the researchers looked at 3,870 Groningen primary schoolers. All were asked whether they had heard "one or more voices that only you and no one else could hear" in the past year. Nine percent of the children answered yes. Only 15 percent of these children said the voices caused them serious suffering, and 19 percent said the voices interfered with their thinking. Boys and girls were equally likely to report hearing voices, but girls were more likely to report suffering and anxiety due to the voices. While past studies have linked complications in the womb or during early infancy with the likelihood of hearing voices, Bartels-Velthuis and her team found no such relationship. The researcher said that she and her colleagues had expected that hearing voices would be more common among urban children than among their rural peers, "but to our surprise, the contrary was the case in our sample. We have no explanation for this finding." Read More...
Siblings Play Formative, Influential Role as 'Agents of Socialization'
Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:31:29 - Pacific Time
What we learn from our siblings when we grow up has -- for better or for worse -- a considerable influence on our social and emotional development as adults, according to an expert in sibling, parent-child and peer relationships at the University of Illinois. Laurie Kramer, a professor of applied family studies in the department of human and community development at Illinois, says that although a parent's influence on a child's development shouldn't be underestimated, neither should a sibling's. "What we learn from our parents may overlap quite a bit with what we learn from our siblings, but there may be some areas in which they differ significantly," Kramer said. Parents are better at teaching the social niceties of more formal settings -- how to act in public, how not to embarrass oneself at the dinner table, for example. But siblings are better role models of the more informal behaviors -- how to act at school or on the street, or, most important, how to act cool around friends -- that constitute the bulk of a child's everyday experiences. "Siblings are closer to the social environments that children find themselves in during the majority of their day, which is why it's important not to overlook the contributions that they make on who we end up being," Kramer said. Kramer, who along with Katherine J. Conger, of the University of California at Davis, co-edited a volume on this topic for a recent issue of the journal New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, says a clearer understanding of how siblings function as "agents of socialization" will help answer critical societal questions such as why some children pursue antisocial behavior. Read More...
Environment Plays Key Role in Developing Reading Skills
Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:48:07 - Pacific Time
While genetics play a key role in children's initial reading skills, a new study of twins is the first to demonstrate that environment plays an important role in reading growth over time.The results give further evidence that children can make gains in reading during their early school years, above and beyond the important genetic factors that influence differences in reading, said Stephen Petrill, lead author of the study and professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University. "We certainly have to take more seriously genetic influences on learning, but children who come into school with poor reading skills can make strides with proper instruction," Petrill said. "The findings support the need for sustained efforts to promote reading development in children that take both genetic and environmental influences into account." While other studies have shown that both genetics and environment influence reading skills, this is the first to show their relative roles in how quickly or slowly children's reading skills improve over time. The study appears online in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The study participants were 314 Ohio twins participating in the Western Reserve Reading Project. This study included 135 identical twins and 179 same-sex fraternal twins. The twins began the study when they were in kindergarten or first grade and were assessed in their homes when they enrolled, and annually for the next two years. At each home visit, the twins were given a 90-minute battery of reading-based measures. Among other things, the tests measured word and letter identification, the ability to sound out words, and the speed at which children could name a series of letters. The researchers compared how twins scored on the tests and then used a statistical analysis to determine how much growth in their performance could be explained by genetics and how much by environmental factors.Environmental factors include everything the children experience -- how they are cared for by their parents, how much they are read to, the neighborhood they live in, nutrition and their instruction in schools, among other factors. The findings showed that when children start out reading, both genetics and environment play a role in readings skills, depending on the skills assessed. For word and letter identification, genetics explained about one-third of the test results, while environment explained two-thirds. For vocabulary and sound awareness, it was equally split between genetics and environment. For the speed tests, it was three-quarters genetic. But when the researchers measured growth in reading skills, environment became much more important, Petrill said. For reading skills that are taught, such as words and letters, the environment is almost completely responsible for growth. For awareness of sounds in reading, about 80 percent of growth was explained by the environment. Speed measures were the only ones where genetics still played a large role. Read More...
News Archive
More Toddlers, Young Children Given Antipsychotics: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 07:43:11 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Later-to-bed teens risk sadness, suicidal thoughts: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 16:56:50 - Pacific Time: Read More...
New therapy method aids kids who cut selves: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 08:00:33 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!": Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:36:54 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Brit kids as young as 10 being treated for cocaine addiction: Fri, 25 Dec 2009 07:50:23 - Pacific Time: Read More...
10 Most Fascinating Savants in the World: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:14:12 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Why do psychologists reject science?: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:42:00 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Video Games Develop Better Visual Skills: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:24:44 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Premature birth tied to later behavioral problems: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:28:50 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Psychotherapy Offers Obesity Prevention for 'at Risk' Teenage Girls: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:53:21 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Witnesses to Bullying May Face More Mental Health Risks Than Bullies and Victims: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:00:33 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Kids' mental problems often unaddressed: U.S. survey: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:48:51 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Support for new parents 'crucial': Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:56:33 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Miller bill would limit how school officials can control unruly students: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 16:23:47 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Psychologists Suggest Parents Should Wait to Teach Toddlers Self-Control: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 07:26:36 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Delinquent Boys at Increased Risk of Premature Death and Disability by Middle Age: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 07:13:36 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Difficult Childhood May Increase Disease Risk in Adulthood: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 07:09:44 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Heavier kids tend to underestimate their size: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 14:48:39 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Physically active boys are smarter, study hints: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 14:42:36 - Pacific Time: Read More...
FDA staff urge more antipsychotic review in kids: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 14:38:39 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Teen internet addicts more apt to self harm: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 22:15:11 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Depression, peers top influences on youth violence: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 22:06:59 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Heavy Criticism from a Parent Can Increase Aggressive Behavior in Children: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:28:22 - Pacific Time: Read More...
How to Find Mental Health Care When Money Is Tight: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:21:18 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Tips on Taming the 'Boogie Monster': Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:19:11 - Pacific Time: Read More...
A fresh look at child psychology: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:09:18 - Pacific Time: Read More...
| Please See Our Catalog of Books About Child Psychology for More Information About This Subject | | Please See Our Catalog of Free Online Videos About Child Psychology for More Information |