Co-occurring Neurodevelopmental Conditions in Children: Advocating for Transdiagnostic Approach to Assessments.

Approximately 8% of all children experience developmental and mental health conditions. Similarities in characteristics across neurodevelopmental conditions-such as difficulties in communication and language, social interaction, motor coordination, attention, activity regulation, behavior, mood, and sleep-make it challenging to attribute these characteristics exclusively to specific diagnoses and assessments. The purpose of this study was to identify symptomatic domains across neurodevelopmental conditions in children and to explore dimension reduction for transdiagnostic assessment.

Use of measures and measurement-based care in child and youth mental health: a survey of Australian practitioners.

Objective: Use of measures by practitioners in mental health (MH) is a cornerstone of evidence-based practice and essential to high-quality service provision. Session-by-session measure use, known as Measurement-Based Care (MBC), has been shown to improve treatment engagement and outcomes, yet little is known about the use of measures or MBC in Australian child and youth MH practitioners. This study surveyed Australian child and youth MH practitioners to examine the frequency of measure use, what outcomes are measured, and what facilitates measure use.

Practitioner perspectives on the child and youth mental health system in Australia: what needs to change?

Objective: Mental health problems in children and young people in Australia are not improving and continue to have a costly impact. Significant changes to the current child youth mental health (CYMH) system are needed and should be informed by key stakeholders such as practitioners "on the ground" delivering services.

Method: Australian practitioners ( = 206) working in CYMH were surveyed using quantitative rating scales and qualitative open-response items.

Reliability, predictive validity and normative data for the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 in a national Australian sample.

Background: We evaluated the reliability, validity and acceptability of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17, a free, brief measure of child mental health, in a sample of parents of preschool-age (3-5 years) and school-age children (6-17 years). This is the first study to examine parent-reported Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 for children aged 3 years.

Method: A national community sample of Australian parents ( = 2097) completed a demographic questionnaire and the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17.

Co-design of the neurodevelopment assessment scale.

Introduction: Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) have high comorbidity rates and shared etiology. Nevertheless, NDD assessment is diagnosis-driven and focuses on symptom profiles of individual disorders, which hinders diagnosis and treatment. There is also no evidence-based, standardized transdiagnostic approach currently available to provide a full clinical picture of individuals with NDDs.

Functional significance of some common oxytocin receptor SNPs involved in complex human traits.

Background: Oxytocin function is associated with a range of human traits and is often indexed by common polymorphisms of the receptor gene OXTR. Little is known however about the functional significance of these polymorphisms.

Objectives: To examine the effects of common polymorphisms of OXTR on transcription expression in human neural cells.

Increasing parent help-seeking for child mental health: A study protocol for the growing minds check-in, an online universal screening tool.

Background: Early identification and intervention for mental health (MH) problems in childhood offers lifelong benefits. Many children with MH problems do not receive appropriate help. To address this need, an online universal MH screening tool, the Growing Minds Check-In for parents/caregivers (GMCI-P), was developed to provide feedback to parents on their children's MH, identify children at risk of MH problems, and link parents to evidence-based online programs/information, with the goal of facilitating parent help-seeking, and ultimately reducing the prevalence of child MH problems.

When Is the Still-Face Not the Still-Face: Mothers' Behavior in the Face-to-Face Still-Face Procedure and Its Relationship to Infant Arousal.

The Face-to-Face Still-Face (FF-SF) procedure has been a popular paradigm to understand infant behavior. The current study examines the validity of mothers' behavior during the Still-Face phase of the FF-SF, especially the quality of her neutral face and its impact on infant arousal (N = 358 ethnically-diverse mother-infant dyads, Mean infant age = 223 days, SD = 27 days). Results showed that more than half of the mothers in the sample breached one or more Still-Face phase instructions; however, mothers' breaches of the Still-Face instructions were unrelated to infant arousal (Skin Conductance Responses) during the FF-SF.

An online, father-inclusive parenting intervention for reducing child conduct problems: a randomised controlled trial of family man.

Background: Parenting interventions are effective for improving child conduct problems (CPs), but online self-directed interventions are required to improve reach and impact. Mothers are the main users of such programmes; fathers show low participation rates despite evidence of increased efficacy when they participate.

Methods: This randomised controlled trial examined the efficacy of Family Man, a brief, self-directed online parenting intervention for fathers and mothers of children with CPs.

Universal Child Mental Health Screening for Parents: a Systematic Review of the Evidence.

Childhood represents a critical window for the emergence and treatment of mental health disorders, yet many are not being identified, or are identified too late to receive adequate intervention. This systematic review (Prospero registration: CRD42022299560) aimed to determine the effectiveness and acceptability of parent reported universal mental health screening (UMHS) to improve the early identification of children at-risk of mental health difficulties, and to identify barriers and enablers that may influence parental engagement. Six databases were searched in February 2022 for peer-reviewed, primary research.

Generation time-out grows up: young adults' reports about childhood time-out use and their mental health, attachment, and emotion regulation.

Time-out (TO) is a widely utilised parental discipline technique with a strong evidence-base that nonetheless has attracted controversy regarding potential adverse effects on mental health in developing children. Associations between TO implementation and mental health outcomes have rarely been investigated, especially through the eyes of children who grew up experiencing TO. This study recruited 407 university students (Study 1) and a community sample of 535 young adults (Study 2); both samples aged 18-30 years.

I Know What to Do; I Can Do It; It Will Work: The Brief Parental Self Efficacy Scale (BPSES) for Parenting Interventions.

Parental self-efficacy predicts outcomes for parenting interventions for child behaviour problems, but there is a need for a brief measure that can be repeated over treatment and applies to a wide age range. The present study describes the development of such a measure, the Brief Parental Self-Efficacy Scale (BPSES). The psychometrics of the BPSES is presented across a wide age range from preschool to late adolescent in a sample comprised of four different intervention contexts.

Oppositional defiant disorder.

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a disruptive behaviour disorder involving an ongoing pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behaviour and vindictiveness. Onset is typically before 8 years of age, although ODD can be diagnosed in both children and adults. This disorder is associated with substantial social and economic burden, and childhood ODD is one of the most common precursors of other mental health problems that can arise across the lifespan.

Using Time-out for Child Conduct Problems in the Context of Trauma and Adversity: A Nonrandomized Controlled Trial.

Importance: Exposure to adverse childhood experiences substantially increases the risk of chronic health problems. Originally designed to treat child conduct problems, parent management training programs have been shown to be effective in preventing children from being exposed to further adversity and supporting children's recovery from adversity; however, there are increasing concerns that a core component of these programs, the discipline strategy time-out, may be harmful for children with a history of exposure to adversity.

Objective: To investigate the comparative benefits and potential harms to children exposed to adversity that are associated with parenting programs that include time-out.

Towards Preventative Psychiatry: Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors of Postnatal Maternal-Infant Bonding.

Maternal-infant bonding is important for children's positive development. Poor maternal-infant bonding is a risk factor for negative mother and infant outcomes. Although researchers have examined individual predictors of maternal-infant bonding, studies typically do not examine several concurrent and longitudinal predictors within the same model.

A review of Australian Government funding of parenting intervention research.

Objectives: Parenting is central to children's optimal development and accounts for a substantial proportion of the variance in child outcomes, including up to 40% of child mental health. Parenting is also one of the most modifiable, proximal, and direct factors for preventing and treating a range of children's problems and enhancing wellbeing. To determine the effectiveness of new approaches to parenting intervention, and to evaluate how to optimise reach and uptake, sufficient funding must be allocated for high quality research.

Learning to like triangles: A longitudinal investigation of evaluative conditioning in infancy.

There is tentative evidence that infants can learn preferences through evaluative conditioning to socioemotional stimuli. However, the early development of evaluative conditioning and the factors that may explain infants' capacity to learn through evaluative conditioning are not well understood. Infants (N = 319; 50.

Building a National Clinical Trials Network in child and youth mental health: Growing Minds Australia.

Many fields of medicine have benefitted from the formation of clinical trials networks, whereby researchers come together on a large scale to identify high-priority questions and implement coordinated clinical trials. Clinical trials networks in the field of mental health, however, have been rare and largely absent from the Australian context. Here, we present an overview of the newly formed Growing Minds Australia Clinical Trials Network, which represents the first comprehensive clinical trials network in child and youth mental health in Australia.

Toward evidence-informed child rearing: Measurement of time-out implementation in a community sample.

Background: Time-out (TO) is a widely used parental discipline strategy with strong research support in programmes that promote positive child development. Concerns have been raised, however, regarding adverse impact on child mental health (CMH) in part driven by evidence of widespread variability in appropriate implementation. There are no existing measures of TO.

More than a feeling? An expanded investigation of emotional responsiveness in young children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits.

Children with conduct problems and high callous-unemotional (CP+CU) traits are characterized by dampened emotional responding, limiting their ability for affective empathy and impacting the development of prosocial behaviors. However, research documenting this dampening in young children is sparse and findings vary, with attachment-related stimuli hypothesized to ameliorate deficits in emotional responding. Here we test emotional responsiveness across various emotion-eliciting stimuli using multiple measures of emotional responsiveness (behavioral, physiological, self-reported) and attention, in young children aged 2-8 years ( age = 5.

Sympathetic nervous system functioning during the face-to-face still-face paradigm in the first year of life.

Contemporary theories of early development and emerging child psychopathology all posit a major, if not central role for physiological responsiveness. To understand infants' potential risk for emergent psychopathology, consideration is needed to both autonomic reactivity and environmental contexts (e.g.

Still connecting the dots: An investigation into infants' attentional bias to threat using an eye-tracking task.

An attentional bias toward threat has been theorized to be a normative aspect of infants' threat and safety learning, and an indicator of risk for internalizing psychopathology in older populations. To date, only four studies have examined this bias using the dot-probe task in infancy and the findings are mixed. We extended the literature by examining patterns of attention to threat in a culturally and linguistically diverse sample of infants aged 5-11 months old (N = 151) using all measures previously employed in the infant dot-probe literature.

Global Workforce Development in Father Engagement Competencies for Family-Based Interventions Using an Online Training Program: A Mixed-Method Feasibility Study.

Global access to practitioner training in the clinical engagement of fathers in family-based interventions is limited. The current study evaluated the feasibility of training practitioners in Canada and UK using online training developed in Australia by examining improvements in practitioner confidence and competence in father engagement, training satisfaction, qualitative feedback, and benchmarking results to those from an Australian sample. Practitioners were recruited to participate in a 2-h online training program through health services and charity organisations.

No hard feelings: maternal emotion socialization and callous-unemotional traits in children.

Parents' identification and discussion of their own and their children's emotions are important emotion socialization behaviors (ESBs) that may mitigate child conduct problems (CPs). However, if parents perceive their child to be relatively unemotional, which may be the case for children with conduct problems and high callous-unemotional traits (CP + CU), these parents may be limited in their capacity to use ESBs effectively. This study tested these questions by looking at ESBs in mothers (N = 145) of children aged 2-8 years with CP + CU (n = 24), CPs and low CU traits (CP-CU; n = 94) and a non-clinical community sample (n = 27).