Irritability in Pediatric Psychopathology

Pediatric irritability, defined as increased proneness to anger relative to peers, is among the most common reasons for mental health referrals. The past 15 years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the empirical study of pediatric irritability with the goal of developing more effective methods of assessing and treating these impaired youth. Irritability in Pediatric Psychopathology offers a comprehensive overview of this work, approaching the topic from multiple perspectives and disciplines including child psychiatry, clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience. The book has five sections composed of chapters written by international experts. The first section provides an overview of the definition and prevalence of pediatric irritability, current assessment methods, and novel behavioral and psychophysiological indicators of irritability in youth. The second section reviews the literature on the development of pediatric irritability from preschool age through adolescence and young adulthood. The third section summarizes the current evidence for genetic and neurobiological factors contributing to pediatric irritability. The fourth section reviews the presentation of irritability across diagnoses including mood and anxiety disorders, disruptive behavior disorders, and autism. Finally, the fifth section presents evidence-based psychological and pharmacological interventions for pediatric irritability. Irritability in Pediatric Psychopathology is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians, and trainees working with children and adolescents.

Irritability in Pediatric Psychopathology

Irritability is a common presenting concern in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This chapter provides an overview of research on irritability in ASD, including informative findings from the related fields of temperament and emotion regulation. The developmental course is described, highlighting irritability as one of the earliest phenotypic characteristics in ASD. ASD-related characteristics that may predispose youth with ASD to experience high or chronic irritability are considered, in addition to conceptualizations of irritability in ASD as resulting from a co-occurring psychiatric disorder. Common approaches to assessment, psychosocial treatment, and pharmacologic management of irritability are summarized. Finally, gaps in our understanding of irritability in ASD are highlighted and promising directions for future research are provided.

Cognitive Training and Technology in the Treatment of Children and Adolescents

Cognitive training approaches in the treatment of pediatric psychopathology rely on the identification of specific aberrant cognitive processes that could be targeted for rectification via training. Such processes include threat-related attention and interpretation, working memory, and emotion recognition, among others. A selective review is given of mental processes that have been identified as potential targets for psychological treatment and the technologies that could be harnessed for such therapeutic targeting. Implementation of cognitive training procedures in the treatment of children, adolescents, and adults is described, and their clinical efficacy is evaluated. Recent technologies harnessed for the implementation of cognitive training protocols, such as eye-tracking, virtual reality, and neuromodulation, are described and their potential applications in novel therapeutic procedures and in improvement of extant cognitive training protocols are discussed.