@article {289, title = {Awareness and perceptions of clinical guidelines for the diagnostics and treatment of severe behavioural problems in children across Europe: A qualitative survey with academic experts}, journal = {European PsychiatryEuropean Psychiatry}, volume = {57}, year = {2019}, month = {2019/04/01}, pages = {1 - 9}, abstract = {

Background
Severe behavioural problems (SBPs1) in childhood are highly prevalent, impair functioning, and predict negative outcomes later in life. Over the last decade, clinical practice guidelines for SBPs have been developed across Europe to facilitate the translation of scientific evidence into clinical practice. This study outlines the results of an investigation into academic experts\’ perspectives on the current prevalence, implementation, and utility of clinical guidelines for SBPs in children aged 6\–12 across Europe.

Methods
An online semi-structured questionnaire was completed by 28 psychiatry and psychology experts from 23 countries.

Results
Experts indicated that approximately two thirds of the included European countries use at least an unofficial clinical document such as textbooks, while nearly half possess official guidelines for SBPs. Experts believed that, although useful for practice, guidelines\’ benefits would be maximised if they included more specific recommendations and were implemented more conscientiously. Similarly, experts suggested that unofficial clinical documents offer a wide range of treatment options to individualise treatment from. However, they stressed the need for more consistent, evidence-based clinical practices, by means of developing national and European clinical guidelines for SBPs.

Conclusions
This study offers a preliminary insight into the current successes and challenges perceived by experts around Europe associated with guidelines and documents for SBPs, acting as a stepping stone for future systematic, in-depth investigations of guidelines. Additionally, it establishes experts\’ consensus for the need to develop official guidelines better tailored to clinical practice, creating a momentum for a transition towards European clinical guidelines for this population.

}, isbn = {0924-9338}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2018.12.009}, author = {Gatej, Alexandra-Raluca and Lamers, Audri and van Domburgh, Lieke and Crone, Matty and Ogden, Terje and Rijo, Daniel and Aronen, Eeva and Barroso, Ricardo and Boomsma, Dorret I. and Vermeiren, Robert} } @article {230, title = {Childhood aggression and the co-occurrence of behavioural and emotional problems: results across ages 3{\textendash}16~years from multiple raters in six cohorts in the EU-ACTION project}, journal = {European Child {\&} Adolescent Psychiatry}, year = {2018}, month = {May}, abstract = {

Childhood aggression and its resulting consequences inflict a huge burden on affected children, their relatives, teachers, peers and society as a whole. Aggression during childhood rarely occurs in isolation and is correlated with other symptoms of childhood psychopathology. In this paper, we aim to describe and improve the understanding of the co-occurrence of aggression with other forms of childhood psychopathology. We focus on the co-occurrence of aggression and other childhood behavioural and emotional problems, including other externalising problems, attention problems and anxiety\–depression. The data were brought together within the EU-ACTION (Aggression in Children: unravelling gene-environment interplay to inform Treatment and InterventiON strategies) project. We analysed the co-occurrence of aggression and other childhood behavioural and emotional problems as a function of the child\&$\#$39;s age (ages 3 through 16\ years), gender, the person rating the behaviour (father, mother or self) and assessment instrument. The data came from six large population-based European cohort studies from the Netherlands (2x), the UK, Finland and Sweden (2x). Multiple assessment instruments, including the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL), the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and Multidimensional Peer Nomination Inventory (MPNI), were used. There was a good representation of boys and girls in each age category, with data for 30,523 3- to 4-year-olds (49.5{\%} boys), 20,958 5- to 6-year-olds (49.6{\%} boys), 18,291 7- to 8-year-olds (49.0{\%} boys), 27,218 9- to 10-year-olds (49.4{\%} boys), 18,543 12- to 13-year-olds (48.9{\%} boys) and 10,088 15- to 16-year-olds (46.6{\%} boys). We replicated the well-established gender differences in average aggression scores at most ages for parental ratings. The gender differences decreased with age and were not present for self-reports. Aggression co-occurred with the majority of other behavioural and social problems, from both externalising and internalising domains. At each age, the co-occurrence was particularly prevalent for aggression and oppositional and ADHD-related problems, with correlations of around 0.5 in general. Aggression also showed substantial associations with anxiety\–depression and other internalizing symptoms (correlations around 0.4). Co-occurrence for self-reported problems was somewhat higher than for parental reports, but we found neither rater differences, nor differences across assessment instruments in co-occurrence patterns. There were large similarities in co-occurrence patterns across the different European countries. Finally, co-occurrence was generally stable across age and sex, and if any change was observed, it indicated stronger correlations when children grew older. We present an online tool to visualise these associations as a function of rater, gender, instrument and cohort. In addition, we present a description of the full EU-ACTION projects, its first results and the future perspectives.

Related interactive tool here.

}, issn = {1435-165X}, doi = {10.1007/s00787-018-1169-1}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-018-1169-1}, author = {Meike Bartels and Anne Hendriks and Matteo Mauri and Eva Krapohl and Alyce Whipp and Koen Bolhuis and Conde, Lucia Colodro and Luningham, Justin and Fung Ip, Hill and Fiona Hagenbeek and Roetman, Peter and Gatej, Raluca and Lamers, Audri and Michel G. Nivard and Jenny van Dongen and Lu, Yi and Christel Middeldorp and van Beijsterveldt, Toos and Vermeiren, Robert and Thomas Hankemeier and Kluft, Cees and Medland, Sarah and Lundstr{\"o}m, Sebastian and Richard J. Rose and Pulkkinen, Lea and Vuoksimaa, Eero and Korhonen, Tellervo and Martin, Nicholas G. and Gitta Lubke and Catrin Finkenauer and Vassilios Fanos and Henning Tiemeier and Lichtenstein, Paul and Robert Plomin and Kaprio, Jaakko and Dorret I. Boomsma} }