Pre-schoolers
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Nutritional Risk Beyond Weight in Autistic Children
Some autistic children eat a very narrow diet for years while their weight and growth stay on track. Because the numbers look reassuring, the nutritional risk underneath can go unnoticed. A stable weight measures whether a child has enough energy. It says little about whether the diet holds everything a body needs, and that gap is where serious harm can build unseen.
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Irritability and Later Depression and Self-Harm in Adolescence
Irritability is common in early childhood and for many children, it reduces over time as they develop better frustration tolerance, language, emotional regulation, and social understanding. However, when irritability remains high across early childhood, it may signal increased vulnerability to later mental health difficulties.
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Assessing and Treating PTSD in Young Children
Learn how PTSD appears in young children, why it’s often missed, and how PTSD-YC criteria and CBT-3M improve early identification and treatment. Blog by Professor Francisco Musich.
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‘Cool Little Kids’ helps reduce later anxiety symptoms but not broader internalising problems
Children with a shy/inhibited temperament are at risk of developing internalising problems later in life.1 Unfortunately, the responses to such behaviours by some parents — such as overprotective or harsh parenting — can add to this risk.
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Can childcare attendance reduce externalising behaviour in children exposed to adversity?
Childcare attendance has been proposed as a public health initiative to help close the developmental gap between children from disadvantaged families and their wealthier peers.1,2 Now, Marie-Pier Larose and colleagues have investigated whether childcare attendance might modify the association between exposure to family adversity early in life and later externalising behaviour by buffering cognitive function.
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Is infant empathy linked with later externalizing problems?
Until recently, it has been assumed that young infants cannot feel empathy for others.1 However, emerging data suggest that this might not actually be the case.2 Now, Yael Paz and colleagues have examined empathy development during the first years of life, analysing data from 165 infants involved in a longitudinal, prospective study.
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Are children of any age susceptible to suicidal behaviour?
Mei-Sing Ong and colleagues in the USA and Canada have investigated the risk factors for suicide attempt in a large cohort of children, adolescents, and young adults with mental health disorders.
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PCIT-ED seems to improve parenting behaviour and affect towards children with depression
Data from a new study show that parenting behaviour and affect improved after completing a dyadic parent–child treatment for depression in young children (aged 3-6 years).
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Is brain circuitry linked with early symptoms of autism spectrum disorder?
Researchers in San Diego, USA, have studied the relationship between brain network connectivity and emerging autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms in toddlers aged 17-45 months with (n=24) or without (n=23) ASD.
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Mental disorders are under researched yet prevalent in children under 7 years
Mira Vasileva and colleagues in Germany and Australia recently compiled a Research Review for the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry on the prevalence of mental disorders in children <7 years old.
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