As of November 1, 2018, I will no longer be working with the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program which is the organization that supports this blog. I have really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to communicate to primary care clinicians and the public across Vermont and beyond about issues related to child mental […]
Rates of Medication Use in Youth Still Well Below Prevalence of Common Diagnoses
There continues to be a great deal of public debate regarding the extent to which psychiatric medications are overused or underused in children and adolescents. One complication to answering this question well has been the difficulty getting good nationally representative numbers regarding the number of youth who take various classes of medications. This new study […]
Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families
Welcome to a new format to assist Vermont primary care clinicians and the general community to access new and quality information to help improve child mental health assessment and treatment. We know the problem all too well: emotional and behavioral problems are extremely common, affecting at least 1 in 5 children. Vermont like every […]
Tags: child mental health, child psychiatry, mental health, pediatric psychiatry, psychiatry, wellness
Stimulant Treatment Linked to Cardiovascular Events in ADHD
The debate over whether or not stimulant medications like methylphenidate raise the risk of cardiovascular diseases and events has been going back and forth for years. Many clinicians will remember the famous comment of Dr. Steven Nissan in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial in 2006 when he hoped that a physician’s hand would […]
Breastfeeding May Boost Child IQ By Increasing Subcortical Grey Matter
While many the medical benefits of breastfeeding such as improved immune function have been clearly established, its effect on child behavior and cognition has somewhat more difficult to determine. This has been due to a variety of reasons. Because randomization is not possible for breastfeeding studies, researchers have had to rely on naturalistic study designs. […]
Tags: benefits of breastfeeding, breastfeeding, breastmilk, iq
Antidepressants and Violent Crime in Youth
Antidepressants have carried a black box warning for years related to new or worsening suicidal behavior in children and young adults. A possible link, however, between SSRIs and other types of violent behavior has been more difficult to identify with studies finding inconsistent results. A recent large Swedish study, recently published in the journal PLOS […]
Tags: antidepressant, ssri, violence
Extreme Picky Eating Linked to Mental Health Problems
A parent’s concern about their young child’s picky eating is one of the most common presenting complaints to primary care clinicians. Generally, if a child is growing and otherwise healthy, the most common response is reassurance and some helpful strategies for how to help kids slowly expand their food repertoire. This strategy usually works well, […]
Tags: arfid, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, picky eating, selective eating, toddler
1st Developmental Psychopathology Special Lecture Tomorrow
The Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families and the Research Center for Children, Youth, & Families is proud to introduce the first annual visiting professorship in developmental psychopathology. Our inaugural recipient is Frank Verhulst, MD, PhD from Erasmus University and Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. As part of his professorship, he will […]
New Website for Vermont Family Based Approach
Want more Vermont Family Based Approach? If you do, a new blog and website has been created that will contain additional news and information. You can also follow them at Twitter at @theVFBA. One of the first posts is a link to an incredible video that describes the VFBA by child psychiatry fellow Sean Ackerman, […]