The mental health and well-being of children and adolescents are critical public health concerns globally. This cross-sectional study analysed nationally representative data from the combined 2016-2022 National Survey of Children's Health (n = 239,534) to produce estimates of parent-reported diagnoses of children's anxiety, depression and…

This study examined longitudinal associations between parental psychological distress (stress and depression) when the child was 2 to 4 years and a child's emotional and behavioural problems at ages 3 to 4, and social functioning (loneliness and social competence) at age 11 in very preterm born children. The participants were Finnish families of…

Suicidal behaviour is a major socio-health problem worldwide. However, there are few empirically validated programs for universal prevention of suicidal behaviour in school settings. The aim of the present study was to design and validate the "PositivaMente" program for the prevention of suicidal behaviour in school-age adolescents aged…

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health is a widespread concern. However, to date, there is limited empirical evidence which can causally attribute changes to the pandemic. With the aim of overcoming some of the existing methodological limitations, the current study utilised a naturally occurring experiment within two…

This study investigated the relationship between mathematics difficulties and psychopathology in a large community sample (N = 881) of youth (8-18 years of age) in the United States. The primary aims of the study were to (a) test the associations between mathematics difficulties and specific components of internalizing, externalizing, attention,…

Poor reading has been linked to negative outcomes on a wide range of emotional-behavioural dimensions in children. However, little is known about the time course of these associations. In this study we analyse data from a sample of Finnish children (N = 199; 106 boys) which included measures of reading fluency in grade 1 (age 7 or 8), and…

This study examined sex differences in externalizing and internalizing symptoms of children with ASD without intellectual disability (ID). The sample (n = 80) included 40 girls and 40 boys, ages 6-12 years, with ASD (without ID) matched on age and IQ. Externalizing and internalizing symptoms were significantly elevated for this sample (girls and…

Background: Many children in the United States are victims of bullying; many of the victimized retaliate, aggressively bullying those who have bullied them. Objective: Applying the multiple disadvantage model, this U.S.-based secondary study of data describing bullied children's own perpetration of bullying examined this behavior's relationship to…

School dropout can be an ongoing process of academic failure and disengagement starting as early as elementary school. Given the importance of early identification of risk factors, the present study examines (a) whether early conduct problems and depressive symptoms predict a higher risk of school dropout, (b) whether depressive symptoms moderate…

Teachers contribute to the process of identifying and referring students for mental health services, however, relatively little is known about how they make those decisions and how decision-making differs across school contexts. This study used a vignette-based method to investigate individual and school contextual factors associated with the…

To investigate the contribution made by autistic children's Challenging Behaviour (CB) to their parents' anxiety and depression, parents of 32 autistic boys and 32 autistic girls (aged 6 to 18 years) completed standardised instruments on their children's behaviour and their own anxiety and depression. Significant associations were found between…

Without preventative intervention, youth with a history of foster care (FC) involvement have a high likelihood of developing depression and anxiety (DA) symptoms. The current study used integrative data analysis to harmonize data across four foster and kinship parent-mediated interventions (and seven randomized control trials) designed to reduce…

Parenting support programmes are one of the most effective means of improving the mental health of caregivers and children. This study used a pre-post control group design with 970 participants to evaluate a group workshop programme (Support, not Perfection) designed to support caregivers of children zero to six in Serbia. Compared to those in the…

The purpose of this study was to identify predictors of friendship quality in adolescents with and without ADHD. The participants were 115 adolescents (61 ADHD, 54 non-ADHD), ages 13-18. The adolescents completed questionnaires assessing the quality of their relationships with their best friends, social perspective taking, anxiety and depression.…

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted numerous people?s mental health and created new barriers to services. To address the unknown effects of the pandemic on accessibility and equality issues in mental health care, this study aimed to investigate gender and racial/ethnic disparities in mental health and treatment use in undergraduate and…