The role of families in the treatment of mental illness has always been a tenuous one. Often blamed (think refrigerator mothers), but also expected to provide continuous care for the afflicted loved one, families carry a significant burden.
The incidence of early-onset restrictive eating disorders in children aged five to 12 years reported by Canadian pediatricians was 2.6 cases per 100,000 person-years. The ratio of girls to boys was 6:1, and 47.1% of girls and 54.5% of boys showed signs of growth delay.
Recently, researchers in the field of conduct disorder (CD) have proposed including a specifier to the diagnosis of CD in DSM-5 based on the presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits.
Four new antipsychotics are beginning to gain some traction in the adult market. Here is a quick low down on paliperidone, iloperidone (Fanapt), lurasidone (Latuda), and asenapine (Saphris).
We really do not know the etiology of what makes a child violent or antisocial. But there are so many successes in medicine—leukemia, many of the cancers—where we do not know etiology yet, but we still have effective treatments.
Anxiety disorders are common in young people, affecting 4%–7% of children. It appears that the majority of “adult” anxiety disorders begin in childhood and are stable and often chronic conditions, so an effective intervention can have lifelong benefits.