Eric Youngstrom

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | UNC · Department of Psychology

Objectives: This study benchmarks quality of life (QoL) of youth with bipolar disorder (BD) against healthy youth, youth with chronic medical conditions, and youth with other psychiatric disorders. The relative impacts of depressive, (hypo)manic, mixed, and externalizing symptoms on QoL is tested for youth with BD. Method: 657 youth completed th...

A key question for any psychopathological diagnosis is whether the condition is continuous or discontinuous with typical variation. The primary objective of this study was to use a multi‐method approach to examine the broad latent categorical versus dimensional structure of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Data were aggregated across seven independe...

ARTICLE FREE TO ACCESS AT: https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2022.2158842. In this editorial statement, we briefly delineated a series of observations, guidelines, and directions for future research focused on the most common outcome of multi-informant assessments of youth mental health. Discrepancies commonly occur between estimates of youth mental...

Aim: To describe the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a new, freely available measure, the Autism Symptom Dimensions Questionnaire (ASDQ). Method: After development and revision of an initial 33-item version, informants completed a revised 39-item version of the ASDQ on 1467 children and adolescents (aged 2-17 years), including...

Aggressive behavior is one of the most common reasons for referrals of youth to mental health treatment. While there are multiple publications describing different types of aggression in children, it remains challenging for clinicians to diagnose and treat aggressive youth, especially those with impulsively aggressive behaviors. The reason for this...

Objective: This paper provides initial validation of the Dimensional Assessment of Restricted and Repetitive Behaviors (DARB)-a new parent-report measure designed to capture the full range of key of restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB) subdomains. Method: Parents of 1892 children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (M= 10.81...

Objective: The accepted primary outcome measure for evaluating psychotic symptoms is decades old, long, and initially designed for adults. Surprisingly, the psychometric properties of primary outcome measures have never been reported for a pediatric sample using modern methods. The present study's aim is to use a pediatric sample to evaluate the p...

Identifying substance use disorders (SUDs) early and accurately improves case formulation and treatment. Previous studies have investigated validity and reliability of the Child and Adolescent Symptom Inventory (CASI) for anxiety, mood, and behavior problems. The present study's aim was to test if the embedded CASI Substance Use (SU) subscale can d...

The purpose of this article is to narratively review the empirical literature on clinicians’ emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses (i.e., countertransference) to depressive and other symptoms of patients with mood disorders. Therapist subjective responses (countertransference) can negatively affect both diagnostic and therapeutic processes...

OBJECTIVE: To provide a review of journal articles discussing clinical cases or vignettes of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy of patients affected by bipolar disorder (BD). METHODS: A thorough search of journal articles was performed in five databases to identify studies published from 1990-2021. RESULTS: Twenty-four articles were i...

No systematic review has been conducted to provide an overview of the effectiveness of psychoanalysis for treatment outcomes in bipolar depression and mania. The present study undertakes a scoping review of the effectiveness of psychoanalysis for bipolar disorder (BD), provides a summary of the evidence base, and identifies issues for future resear...

Objectives We aimed to investigate the characteristics of adolescents with Bipolar disorder-I with irritability and agitation (Mania+IA) compared to those without irritability and agitation (Mania-IA) in a multi-center representative sample. Methods Data of 145 patients from three tertiary-care inpatient units between 2016 and 2021 were obtained....

The status of irritability as a feature of mood and behavior disorders in children has been a topic of much debate. From a disruptive behavior disorder (DBD) perspective, irritability has emerged as a central feature of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and has been uniquely associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety. From the perspective...

Objective Building on prior findings in adults, we investigated regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) in relation to DSM-5 Criterion A symptoms of depression and mania among youth with bipolar disorder (BD). Method We recruited 81 youth with BD and 75 healthy controls (HC) 13-20 years old. CBF was ascertained using pseudocontinuous arterial spin labe...

Aggressive behavior in early childhood characterized by frequent, severe temper outbursts, causes high impairment and distress for families. Emerging evidence suggests that aggression which is impulsive or reactive may define a distinct group of children who experience severe behavior problems outside the context of a mood disorder. Accepted diagno...

We thank Andrew Shaw and colleagues for their recent paper1 in Bipolar Disorders, highlighting that the effective treatment of patients with bipolar disorder requires a good therapeutic alliance, which is related to the clinicians’ countertransference reactions and their management. The authors suggest that the integration of a psychodynamic approa...

There are not enough of us. That was true even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has only made the need for mental health services more acute.1,2 There are roughly 30,500 practicing psychiatrists in the United States, and 106,000 licensed psychologists, and perhaps a million mental health practitioners worldwide. That translates to roughly one ps...

It is vital to identify substance use disorders (SUDs) in youths and adults early and accurately. Previous studies have investigated the validity and reliability of the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self Report (YSR) for other related anxiety, mood, and behavior problems. The present study tested if the CBCL and YSR substance...

The present study examined language trajectories and placement outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) receiving early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI). Language measures were collected at baseline and 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months or until exit from EIBI in 131 children with ASD. Growth models estimated overall and subgrou...

Background Numerous studies have found elevated pro-inflammatory markers and reduced brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) during symptomatic episodes of bipolar disorder (BD) in adults. There is a paucity of research examining these markers in youth with BD, or longitudinally in any BD age group. Methods 79 adolescents, ages 13-19 years, were...

Aim Given ongoing disagreement about the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder, we sought to illuminate key empirical findings regarding the condition in children and adolescents. Methods We conducted a review of extant studies of the diagnosis, course, and treatment bipolar disorder in children and adolescents. Results Bipolar disorder is a li...

Information related to the COVID-19 pandemic ranges from biological to bibliographic, from geographical to genetic and beyond. The structure of the raw data is highly complex, so converting it to meaningful insight requires data curation, integration, extraction and visualization, the global crowdsourcing of which provides both additional challenge...

Objective: Despite being a core diagnostic feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), developmental and clinical correlates of restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests (RRB) remain poorly characterized. This study aimed to utilize the largest available RRB data set to date to provide a comprehensive characterization of how distinct RRB do...

Although hopelessness has been linked to depression for centuries, the diagnostic criteria for depression are inconsistent with regard to the status of hopelessness. Most research on hopelessness and depression has focused on adults. The current study examined this relation in children and adolescents. Integrative data analyses with a pooled sample...

Objectives: Irritability and anhedonia are cardinal symptoms of depression for children and adolescents. However, anhedonia may be more strongly associated with illness severity compared with irritability. The present study evaluated the impact of irritability and anhedonia on symptom severity and functional impairment among depressed children and...

For many years, scholars have sought to examine "for whom" psychotherapy is most likely to yield efficacious results. This special issue offers a review of research in several areas of child and adolescent psychopathology, and provides helpful points to guide future research in this area.

Objective: This study evaluated the association between mood and anxiety symptoms and suicidal attempt (SA) and/or non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in adolescents seeking mental health services. We also tested predictors of SA and NSSI. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 220 adolescents who completed psychological assessm...

Objective: Aggression with impulsivity and reactivity (AIR) may distinguish a subset of youth from those with attention problems, rule-breaking behavior, or mood disorders, potentially with differential treatment response. Yet, DSM-5 and ICD-10 do not include an AIR diagnosis. Thus, we empirically grouped youths into profiles based on AIR, manic, d...

Objective Test differential prospective prediction of growth in externalizing behavior, including oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD) and substance use disorders (SUDs), by earlier hyperactive-impulsive (HI) versus inattentive (IN) symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method Participants in the Longit...

Background Restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB) in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) encompass several distinct domains. However, commonly used general ASD measures provide broad RRB scores rather than assessing separate RRB domains. The main objective of the current investigation was to conduct a psychometric evaluation of the ability of the Soc...

The primary objectives of this study were to evaluate the structure and age‐related stability of social attention in English and Arabic‐speaking youth and to compare social attention between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), other developmental disabilities (DD), and typically‐developing controls. Eye‐tracking data were collected from U...

The present study examines the relationship between Perceived Criticism (PC) and Sensitivity to Criticism (SC) in youth with Bipolar Spectrum Disorder (BPSD), their symptomatic experiences, and family functioning. We hypothesized that findings for youth would be consistent with findings for adults indicating that PC and SC would be associated with...

Background Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) co-occur at high rates and greater disorder severity. Studies examining the contributions of specific emotion regulation (ER) processes and negative affect (NA) to PTSD and MDD co-occurrence are scarce. This study investigated a transdiagnostic understanding of the...

The ongoing Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting most specialized healthcare services worldwide, including those for high-risk newborns and their families. Due to the risk of contagion, critically ill infants, relatives and professionals attending neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are undergoing a profound remodeling of th...

News of a videogame that received FDA clearance to treat youth with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) garnered a great deal of media attention and raised questions about the role of digital cognitive training programs for treatment. In order for clinicians and clients to understand this news for the purposes of making treatment decisi...

Describe hospitalization rates in children with elevated symptoms of mania and determine predictors of psychiatric hospitalizations during the 96 month follow-up. Eligible 6–12.9 year olds and their parents visiting 9 outpatient mental health clinics were invited to be screened with the Parent General Behavior Inventory 10-item Mania Scale. Of 605...

Assessing youth psychopathology involves collecting multiple informants’ reports. Yet, multi-informant reports often disagree, necessitating integrative strategies that optimize predictive power. The Trait score approach leverages principal components analysis (PCA) to account for the context and perspective from which informants provide reports. T...

Beyond public health and economic costs, the COVID-19 pandemic adds strain, disrupts daily routines, and complicates mental health and medical service delivery for those with mental health and medical conditions. Bipolar disorder can increase vulnerability to infection; it can also enhance stress, complicate treatment, and heighten interpersonal st...

Beyond public health and economic costs, the COVID-19 pandemic adds strain, disrupts daily routines, and complicates mental health and medical service delivery for those with mental health and medical conditions. Bipolar disorder can increase vulnerability to infection; it can also enhance stress, complicate treatment, and heighten interpersonal st...

Objective: Risk calculators (RC) to predict clinical outcomes are gaining interest. A RC to estimate risk of bipolar spectrum disorders (BPSD) could help reduce the duration of undiagnosed BPSD and improve outcomes. Our objective was to adapt a RC previously validated in the Pittsburgh Bipolar Offspring study sample (BIOS; Hafeman et al., 2017) to...

In the May 6th Issue of the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Malhi et al. published a Reflection¹ asserting that the use of the term paediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) should be abandoned. Referencing unreplicated studies and dated citations, the authors incorrectly infer from administrative database studies that rates of bipolar dis...

The ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic has to date infected more than one million people and led to tens of thousands of deaths across the globe. Thus, many governments have imposed regional or national mass shelters‐in‐place in an effort to slow its rapid spread. In this global health emergency, special attention should be paid to the potential impact of t...

Objective: To evaluate short forms of free self-report mania and depression scales, evaluating their reliability, content coverage, criterion validity, and diagnostic accuracy. Method: Youths age 11 to 18 years seeking outpatient mental health services at either an Academic medical clinic (N = 427) or urban Community mental health center (N = 313),...

Background: Severe irritability has become an important topic in child and adolescent mental health. Based on the available evidence and on public health considerations, WHO classified chronic irritability within oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) in ICD‐11, a solution markedly different from DSM‐5’s (i.e. the new childhood mood diagnosis, disrup...

A. Plan for most common issues seen in our setting. How well do we know our clients and anticipate/detect their needs? Identify our most common clinical issues /hypotheses; develop assessment methods for identifying each condition.

Despite the importance of psychotherapists’ subjective experience working with patients with mental issues, little is known about the relationship between therapists’ emotional reactions and patients’ personality problems. The present study is a systematic review of quantitative research on the association between patients’ personality pathology an...

Bipolar disorders are difficult to diagnose and treat, despite their global prevalence and pervasiveness. With the proper tools, however, clinicians and researchers alike are able to detect bipolar disorders in their patients and establish the proper treatment plans. Knowing the prevalence of bipolar disorders and other common diagnoses in a specif...

Bipolar disorder is a common psychiatric condition that is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. As a dynamic, recurrent, and chronic illness, it can be complex to identify and manage. In this Primer on text, leading international authors explore aspects of clinical presentation epidemiology, etiology, neurobiology, and treatment of bi...

Diagnosis is fundamental to clinical practice. Patients look to us to make sense of their problems, give them a name, unlock access to services, organize treatment, and lead to better outcomes. Gibbons et al.1 developed and validated a computer-assisted diagnostic interview that covers common clinical problems. Using two large samples, they statist...

Background: Language assessment is a key element of evaluations of children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). The present study examined the validity of a gaze-based receptive language index (RLI) in predicting language test results. Method: Participants included toddlers, pre-school, and school age children and adolescents...

We aimed to identify markers of future affective lability in youth at bipolar disorder risk from the Pittsburgh Bipolar Offspring Study (BIOS) (n = 41, age = 14, SD = 2.30), and validate these predictors in an independent sample from the Longitudinal Assessment of Manic Symptoms study (LAMS) (n = 55, age = 13.7, SD = 1.9). We included factors of mi...

This study tested an integrated package for high-quality school mental health (SMH) services involving quality assessment and improvement, family engagement and empowerment, modular evidence-based practice, and implementation support. Within a two-year randomized controlled trial, 35 clinicians, who provided services to 529 students and their famil...

Background: Few studies have examined multiple genetic variants concurrently for the purpose of classifying bipolar disorder (BD); the literature among youth is particularly sparse. We selected 35 genetic variants, previously implicated in BD or associated characteristics, from which to identify the most robustly predictive group of genes. Method...

In 2018, De Los Reyes and Langer expanded the scope of the Evidence Base Updates series to include reviews of psychological assessment techniques. In keeping with the goal of offering clear “take-home messages” about the evidence underlying the technique, experts have proposed a rubric for evaluating the reliability and validity support. Changes in...

Objectives: To clarify the clinical features preceding the onset of Bipolar disorder (BD) has become a public health priority for the prevention of high morbidity and mortality. BD remains frequently under- or misdiagnosed, and under- or mistreated, often for years. Methods: We assessed the predictive value of precursors and prodromes of BD. We...

Objective: To examine development of bipolar spectrum disorders (BPSD) and other disorders in prospectively followed children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method: In the Longitudinal Assessment of Manic Symptoms (LAMS) study, 531 of 685 children age 6-12 (most selected for scores > 12 on General Behavior Inventory 10-ite...

The goal of this study is to develop a rational data-driven definition of impulsive/reactive aggression and establish distinctions between impulsive/reactive aggression and other common childhood problems. This is a secondary analysis of data from Assessing Bipolar: A Community Academic Blend (ABACAB; N = 636, ages 5–18), Stanley Medical Research I...

The Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) taxonomy of cognitive abilities married John Horn and Raymond Cattell’s Extended Gf-Gc theory with John Carroll’s Three-Stratum Theory. While there are some similarities in arrangements or classifications of tasks (observed variables) within similar broad or narrow dimensions, other salient theoretical features and st...

Objective: Research on pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) has grown substantially in the past 7 years; updating a 2011 meta-analysis of PBD prevalence could improve understanding of factors that influence prevalence. Data sources: A literature review of papers published in English was updated in 2018 using PubMed and PsycINFO. Search terms include...

Pseudoscience in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy - edited by Stephen Hupp March 2019

Over the past two decades, research on pediatric bipolar disorder has grown geometrically. The diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder was met with enthusiasm, which in healthy doses catalyzed change, and skepticism, which in good measure pushes for rigor. Skepticism led to productive questions about the phenomenology of pediatric bipolar disorder...

Cambridge Core - Health and Clinical Psychology - Pseudoscience in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy - edited by Stephen Hupp

A key component of delivering mental health services involves evaluating psychosocial impairments linked to mental health concerns. Youth may experience these impairments in various ways (e.g., dysfunctional family and/or peer relationships, poor school performance). Importantly, youth may display symptoms of mental illness without co-occurring psy...

Although schools administer many assessments, there is a lack of consensus regarding the best way to combine different pieces of information to facilitate evidence-based decision-making, particularly within multitiered systems of support. Although largely unheard of in education, the nomogram is an evidence-based assessment tool that is widely used...

We compared the diagnostic efficiency of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Thought Problems subscale and the rationally derived DSM-oriented psychotic symptoms scale (DOPSS) to identify clinically concerning psychosis in a multi-site sample of youths seeking outpatient mental health services (N = 694). We operationally defined clinically concerni...

Background Late adolescence and early adulthood is a period of highest incidence for onset of mental health problems. Transition to college environment has been associated with many risk factors such as the initial disruption—and subsequent irregularity—of the student’s sleep and activity schedule. We tested the feasibility of using blue blocking...