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Self-report is seen as important in assessments of psychopathology but individuals with intellectual disability may have difficulty with standard questionnaires. This paper reports on the administration and subsequent modifications to several established self-report measures of mental health. Methods: The participants were 57 children with intellectual disability aged 10 to 13 years. They completed the Children's Depression Inventory, Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, Intellectual Disability Mood Scale, and Moods and Feelings Questionnaire. Results: Difficulties with the instruments were identified, including complex wording and item structure, ambiguity and working memory demands. Adaptations were made to the instruments and administration procedures. In a second administration there were improvements in children's ability to respond. The modified questionnaires demonstrated acceptable to good internal consistency and were strongly correlated. Conclusions: Self-report measures of mental health can be completed by children with intellectual disability but may need pilot testing and modifications to make them more appropriate for this population.

This study investigated the ability of primary school teachers to recognise and refer children with anxiety symptoms. Two hundred and ninety-nine primary school teachers completed a questionnaire exploring their recognition and referral responses to five hypothetical vignettes that described boys and girls with varying severity of anxiety symptoms. Results revealed that teachers were generally able to recognise and make the decision to refer children with severe levels of anxiety. However, they had difficulty distinguishing between children with moderate anxiety symptoms and a severe anxiety disorder. Female teachers were more likely to refer children than were male teachers. The implications and future research are discussed. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Intellectual disability (ID) is associated with a range of risk factors that make children more vulnerable to adverse developmental outcomes, including mental health problems. Nevertheless, some children with ID do much better than others, presumably because of the presence of protective factors that increase their resilience. The current study compared resiliency profiles of children with ID (n = 115; mean age, 11.9 years) and their typically developing peers (n = 106; mean age, 11.8 years) using the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents and the Healthy Kids Resilience Assessment. In many respects, children with ID and their typically developing peers reported similar levels of the protective factors that are associated with resilience. However, the children with ID reported higher levels of emotional sensitivity and lower tolerance, as well as fewer future goals. Compared with typically developing children, those with ID reported more support at school and less support within their communities. These findings have important implications for interventions that aim to promote positive developmental outcomes and to prevent the adverse sequelae that have been associated with low intelligence.

The rate of emotional and behavioural disturbance in children with intellectual disability (ID) is up to four times higher than that of their typically developing peers. It is important to identify these difficulties in children with ID as early as possible to prevent the chronic co-morbidity of ID and psychopathology. Children with ID have traditionally been assessed via proxy reporting, but appropriate and psychometrically rigorous instruments are needed so that children can report on their own emotions and behaviours. In this study, the factor structure of the self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was examined in a population of 128 children with ID (mean age = 12 years). Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed a three factor model (comprising Positive Relationships, Negative Behaviour and Emotional Competence) to be a better measure than the original five factor SDQ model in this population. (Contains 6 tables.)

Introduction: This cross-cultural study compared both the symptoms of anxiety and their severity in a community sample of children from Colombia and Australia. Method: The sample comprised 516 children (253 Australian children and 263 Colombian children), aged 8 to 12-years-old. The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) was used to measure both the symptoms and levels of anxiety. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare the samples. Results: The results showed a significant difference in the severity of the symptoms between the children in the two countries. In general, Colombian children reported more severe symptoms than their Australian peers, however there were no difference in the types of symptoms reported by the children in the two countries. Discussion and Conclusion: The implications of these findings and their importance to cross-cultural research are discussed. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)

Bullying, once considered a "rite of passage" among school children, is increasingly recognized as a serious public health issue. Schools are tasked to both prevent and intervene effectively in bullying; however, the problem does not appear to be decreasing. We know that if teachers see bullying among students and do nothing, then bullying is likely to increase. Teachers are influenced by a number of factors to intervene or not. We discuss these factors, such as teachers' ability to recognize bullying, judgments about how serious a bullying incident is, normative beliefs about bullying, the gender and popularity of the students involved, their own self-efficacy, their empathy, their own stress, the lack of time to effectively intervene and the support of the school leadership. We argue that teacher professional development, including pre-service education, needs to be more nuanced for teachers to take into account these factors to reduce bullying in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School bullying is a global phenomenon with teachers often at the forefront of responding to this behavior. It is, therefore, important that teachers are able both to understand and articulate what bullying is and to recognize bullying behavior. Ninety-five Australian early childhood teachers participated in an online survey to define bullying, fighting and identify the differences between the two behaviors. They were also asked to identify from 20 scenarios whether the behaviors depicted traditional bullying behaviors, cyberbullying behaviors, non-bullying face-to-face behaviors or non-cyberbullying behaviors. Results found that teachers described some of the three characteristics of bullying, that is, the intention to harm, power difference, and repetition; however, many teachers had difficulty clearly explaining the distinguishing differences between bullying and fighting. The majority of teachers identified the bullying behaviors in the scenarios; however, some teachers misinterpreted some non-bullying behaviors as bullying. The need to increase teacher's knowledge of bullying to support the prevention and intervention of bullying are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the perceptions of 156 students who were victims of both traditional and cyberbullying (117 female, 45 male), ages 10 to 17 years, as to which form of bullying was more hurtful. Overall, students perceived traditional victimization to be more hurtful than cyber victimization. Reasons identified in the data to explain the different perceptions of victims were categorized and found to relate to: the bully, the bystanders, the bullying incidents, the emotional impact on the victim, and the victim’s ability to respond. The perceptions of these students challenge a number of suppositions presented in the literature that attempt to explain why cyberbullying is associated with more negative outcomes than traditional bullying. The implications for antibullying programs to address these issues are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high level of parental involvement is widely considered to be essential for optimal child and adolescent development and wellbeing, including academic success. However, recent consideration has been given to the idea that extremely high levels of parental involvement (often called 'overparenting' or 'helicopter parenting') might not be beneficial. This study used a newly created overparenting measure, the Locke Parenting Scale (LPS), to investigate the association of overparenting and children's homework. Eight hundred and sixty-six parents completed online questionnaires about their parenting beliefs and intentions, and their attitudes associated with their child's homework. Parents with higher LPS scores tended to take more personal responsibility for the completion of their child's homework than did other parents, and ascribed greater responsibility for homework completion to their child's teacher. However, increased perceived responsibility by parents and teachers was not accompanied by a commensurate reduction in what they perceived was the child's responsibility. Future research should examine whether extreme parental attitudes and reported behaviours translate to validated changes in actual homework support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There are very few studies which examine how children and adolescents define traditional bullying and cyberbullying. • We know that parents and teachers do not define bullying in the same way as researchers. • Participants had a limited ability to apply the given bullying and cyberbullying definitions to real life scenarios. • The older children became the more able they were to apply the definition. There was no gender difference. • However, girls and older children perceived all bullying scenarios as more serious than boys and younger students. Bullying among children and adolescents is a significant and serious social phenomenon that has continued to be a problem despite the implementation of current intervention programs. The words bullying and cyberbullying have been controversial terms with researchers and the general public holding different views of what they mean. The problem is that these differences could potentially lead to inconsistent responding approaches and impact the effectiveness of prevention and intervention measures. Previous research has found that parents and teachers may have a different understanding of the key concepts of bullying and cyberbullying than researchers and have difficulty in applying these definitions to complex real-life scenarios. However, there are an extremely limited number of studies that have investigated students' understanding of bullying applied to real-life scenarios and even scarcer studies examining young people's understanding of cyberbullying applied to complex scenarios. The current study thus used a scenario-based questionnaire which was constructed using the Delphi method (that is, a consensus of experts) to examine children and adolescents' ability to accurately identify bullying and cyberbullying situations from non-bullying situations and their perceived seriousness of these situations. The impact of age and gender on identification and the level of serious of bullying scenarios was also examined. Results indicated that children and adolescents have a limited ability to apply a given standard researchers' bullying and cyberbullying definition to real life scenarios. Findings also demonstrated that young people's abilities differed significantly depending on their age, but not on their gender. Girls perceived both traditional and cyberbullying scenarios as more serious than boys, and the perceived level of seriousness also differed significantly based on their age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well recognised that there are serious correlates for victims of traditional bullying. These have been shown to include increased levels of depression, anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms, in addition to often severe physical harm and even suicide. Bullied students also feel more socially ineffective and have greater interpersonal difficulties, together with higher absenteeism from school and lower academic competence. In the emerging field of cyberbullying many researchers have hypothesised a greater impact and more severe consequences for victims because of the 24/7 nature and the possibility of the wider audience with this form of bullying. However, to date there is scarce empirical evidence to support this. This study sought to compare victims' perceptions of the harshness and impact of bullying by traditional and cyber means. The major findings showed that although students who had been victimised by traditional bullying reported that they felt their bullying was harsher and crueller and had more impact on their lives than those students who had been cyberbullied, the correlates of their mental health revealed that cybervictims reported significantly more social difficulties, and higher levels of anxiety and depression than traditional victims. The implications for school counsellors and mental health workers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive control training has gained traction as an intervention for reducing anxiety and depression vulnerability in adults. There are, however, a limited number of studies investigating such training interventions for reducing symptomology of anxiety and depression in children and adolescents. Thus, we aimed to provide a robust review and qualitative synthesis of the available research in young people. Twelve articles met the inclusion criteria, and all were randomised control trials. Evidence of the efficacy of cognitive control training for relief of symptoms are reported separately for anxiety, depression, and other related psychological factors, and on the basis of type of cognitive control training paradigm. A lack of standardisation in relation to type of intervention, duration and context, outcome measures and population was observed. Results are discussed in terms of these variations and recommendations for future research are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]