Mental Health

Youths who received medication in a timely manner were less likely to discontinue treatment for opioid use disorder compared with youths who received behavioral health services only, according to recently published study results in JAMA Pediatrics. However, researchers said this “critical evidence-based intervention” is underused in younger patients.

The estimated prevalence of diagnosed ADHD in U.S. children and adolescents increased significantly in the last 2 decades, according to study results published in JAMA Network Open.

Two different methodological approaches — instrumental variable and co-relative analysis —implemented in a large sample of Swedish participants followed for an average of 19 years, indicated a causal connection between academic achievement assessed at age 16 years and drug abuse.

The AAP has issued a clinical report highlighting the outcomes of children born to mothers who use marijuana during pregnancy and while breastfeeding. This report, the researchers said, is a response to the increasing number of pregnant and nonpregnant women who use the drug.

Study findings published in Depression & Anxiety showed that a mother’s depression altered their child’s stress and immune systems intactness and social repertoire, decreasing their resilience and increasing their susceptibility to psychopathology.

Gene expression activity within oral microbial communities may be altered in children with autism spectrum disorder, findings published in Autism Research revealed.

Ted Eickhoff understood the intersection of public health and the infectious disease practitioner, effectively using his editorial pulpit at Infectious Disease News to promote dialogue and discourse on the rapidly changing circumstances that would dictate public health policy. He recognized the ever-evolving microbial world’s impact on not only the individual patient, but on the community at large, and remained at the forefront, ensuring that infectious disease practitioners received needed information in a timely manner so they could remain staunch public health partners. A profession is traditionally defined by its common body of knowledge. As with the 1910 Flexner Report that proved revolutionary for medical education in the United States, the 1915 Welch-Rose report presented to the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation outlined public health as a profession in which “Unity is to be found rather in the end to be accomplished. ... Public Health is not a single profession in the traditional sense and is best defined by its shared goals rather than its disparate means. Articulating who we are and what we do remains one of our greatest challenges.”

Children and teenagers with more frequent disruption in their residential environments were at higher risk for nonaffective psychosis, according to findings published in JAMA Psychiatry.

Children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, achieved greater improvement of constipation and insomnia symptoms when families were involved in setting treatment goals compared with prescriptive treatment goals set by clinicians, according to study results published in Pediatrics.

Migrant children are at an increased risk for numerous health problems. Infectious Diseases in Children asked Janine Young, MD, FAAP, medical director of the Denver Health Refugee Clinic and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and Elizabeth Barnert, MD, MPH, MS, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, about the level of care migrant children should receive at federal detention and processing centers.