After reading these articles, you should be able to…

In 2011, we wrote a review of medications for PTSD in children and found, unfortunately, that data to inform true evidence-based practice was scant. There are still no psychotropic medications that have been proven effective in randomized controlled trials for children with PTSD and there are no FDA approved medications for this population.

Learn about Trauma Systems Therapy (TST) and its use with young patients in an interview with Glenn Saxe, MD, Arnold Simon professor and chair, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and director, the Child Study Center.

Autism is fairly common and is extremely hard to treat. A couple of antipsychotics (Risperdal, Abilify) can help decrease the agitation common in autism, and some behavior therapies can improve the ability to interact with others. But these behavioral techniques have only been studied in the short term—which is not very helpful, because autism is a long term problem.

For better or worse, we are prescribing atypical antipsychotics more frequently in children. Some of this is due to new FDA indications for kids (autism, psychotic disorders, and bipolar disorder), but much of the increase is driven by off-label use (Tourette’s, ADHD, OCD, depression, conduct disorder and impulse control disorders).

After reading these articles, you should be able to…

Kids are not immune to either the positives or the negatives of caffeine intake. As the energy drink industry has exploded, we are learning more about the effects of caffeine and other legal stimulants on kids, and the information is enough to make any child psychiatrist positively jittery.

Get some practical advice on how child psychiatrists can use therapy to help kids with anxiety disorders, in an interview with Robin Zasio, PsyD, LCSW, owner and director of The Anxiety Treatment Center in Sacramento, CA.

When kids come to us with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), we know that first-line treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). But then what? What about the kids who don’t respond to CBT or SSRIs? This research update discusses studies measures, treatments and medications for to take to help your younger OCD patients.

In March 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Actavis’ asenapine (Saphris) for the acute treatment of manic or mixed episodes associated with bipolar disorder in kids between 10 and 17 years.