This article discusses the conceptualisation of "enuresis nocturna" by Dutch experts between "c."1950 and 1990, years in which across the West new child sciences rapidly developed. Today, bedwetting is conceived as a mental illness caused by a mixture of nature- and nurture-bound factors. Have organic and environmental causes…

Adolescents, particularly those with autism spectrum disorders, increasingly use psychiatric emergency services. Such risk is further greater in girls. Available knowledge on young people with autism during crises lacks understanding of gender differences and of differences between typically developing adolescents and adolescents with autism.…

The high rates of comorbidity with substance use disorders in general psychiatry patients demand enhanced competences from psychiatry residents in addiction medicine. The aim of this article is to improve knowledge, skills and attitudes in psychiatric residents in treating patients with comorbid substance-related disorders (SUD). Four seminars…

The historiography of child guidance has focused primarily on the United States, where it first developed before travelling across the English-speaking world. The rapid expansion of child guidance in the interwar years was enabled by private philanthropy, which provided fellowships to foreign professionals to study in the United States. This…

This article discusses the science-based diagnostic observation in a Dutch girls' reformatory in the 1950s. Scientisation of the observation implied that to the medical examination upon entry and observation of a child's behaviour were added a psychological assessment, a psychiatric examination, and an inquiry into the family of origin. Inspired…

Responsive evaluation honors democratic and participatory values and intends to foster dialogues among stakeholders to include their voices and enhance mutual understandings. The question explored in this article is whether and how responsive evaluation can offer a platform for moral learning ("Bildung") in the interference zone between…

Background: The therapeutic alliance between multidisciplinary teams and parents within youth (semi) residential psychiatry is essential for the treatment process and forms a promising process variable for Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM). No short evaluative instrument, however, is currently available to assess parent-team alliance. Objective: In…

Following Foucault's analysis of expanding psychiatric power, this article addresses the shift from psychiatry into pedagogy in interventions concerning children with mental problems in the nineteenth century. The aims of this article are twofold. First, to answer the question of how the notion of "idiocy" developed in the context of an…

Systematic reviews have traditionally focused on internal validity, while external validity often has been overlooked. In this study, we systematically reviewed determinants of external validity in the accumulated randomized controlled trials of social skills group interventions for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. We…

Agreement among informants' ratings of children's and adults' internalizing and externalizing problems is moderate. Each informant contributes unique information about an individual's problems. Thus, it has been advocated to obtain ratings from multiple sources in child psychiatry, whereas adult psychiatry relies mostly on self-reports.…

Background: Diagnostics and care for people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and psychiatric disorders need to be improved. This can be done by using assessment instruments to routinely measure the nature and severity of psychiatric symptoms. Up until now, in the Netherlands, assessment measures are seldom used in the psychiatric care for this…

This article is concerned with the history of the neurological disorder that preceded ADHD: "neurasthenia" or nervousness, conceived of as a functional disease of the nervous system. Around 1900 it appeared on the scene of children's disorders and it disappeared at the time of the pharmacological turn in psychiatry by the late 1960s. In…

This article describes the identification of a 10-item set of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (SCID-II) items, which proved to be effective as a self-report assessment instrument in screening personality disorders. The item selection was based on the retrospective analyses of 495 SCID-II interviews. The…

In this article, the author discusses plans that were launched at three consecutive conferences on care for toddlers between 1929 and 1938 in the Netherlands. These plans and their realisation are evaluated in terms of what was seen as the missing link in the supply of institutional care for young children. The author identifies the professional…

Since 2007 there is a full-time, 2-year professional training in addiction medicine in the Netherlands. The aim of this article is to describe in detail the development and present status of the Dutch Master in Addiction Medicine (MiAM) program. In this competency-based professional training, theoretical courses are integrated with learning in…