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Living with idiopathic short stature (ISS) may entail significant risks to psychological functioning and quality of life. Apparent inconsistency among study findings can be resolved if methodological differences among study designs are taken into account (i.e., definition of particular endpoints, sample selection from clinic or population, source of report, specific or generic assessment instruments, statistical control of confounders). Some individuals fail and others succeed in mastering the challenges of ISS. The principles of multifinality and equifinality may explain the emergence of a broad variation of individuals with ISS as a result of an interaction of the individual medical and auxological features on the one side, and psychosocial risk and protective factors on the other. As a result, patients may show heterogeneous developmental outcomes ranging from clinical psychopathology to development of resilience. A taxonomy of four distinct pathways of adaptation to ISS is delineated as a basis for case formulation and treatment planning. Psychological intervention in ISS includes counseling, cognitive-behavioral therapy and assertiveness training to improve psychological functioning via enhancement of target coping behaviors for critical situations. Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2007, a Conference on Idiopathic Short Stature (ISS) endorsed the definition of ISS as a statistical (auxologic) rather than a medical (pathologic) deviation from the norm. Consequently, the ultimate criteria for evaluation of treatment in ISS shift from medical to psychological endpoints. Objective: This review synthesizes empirical evidence of psychological outcomes in treated and untreated subjects with ISS, recommendations from the recent ISS Consensus Conference, theoretical concepts from pediatric psychology and rationales used for various intervention strategies to better evaluate and manage psychological endpoints in ISS in accordance with the Consensus Conference definition. Methods: Different measures of psychological outcome in ISS are reviewed to explain apparent heterogeneity among empirical study findings. Key issues include: (1) adaptation to major stressors associated with short stature (e.g., bullying, peer relations) and the correlation of adaptation failure with low socioeconomic status and impaired quality of life in adulthood; (2) development of valid and sensitive assessment tools; (3) clinical decision-making based on psychological assessment, ethical principles concerning informed consent and expectation of benefit from psychological treatment and (4) intervention approaches including counselling, cognitive-behavioral therapy, assertiveness training and growth hormone therapy. Conclusions: There are different but complementary strategies for medical and psychological enhancement of psychosocial outcome in subjects with ISS. Copyright © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the neurocognitive and psychosocial outcomes in children who are born small for gestational age (SGA) has increased since the recent approval of growth hormone (GH) therapy in this indication. The objective of GH treatment in SGA children is to provide a symptomatic treatment for growth retardation. From a patient perspective, the ultimate goals of GH therapy are the reduction in the present or future risk of neurocognitive, psychological, social or occupational impairment, not the accompanying improvements in growth velocity and final height per se. Therefore, from a scientific perspective, neurocognitive and psychosocial endpoints become relevant domains of assessment to determine the final treatment benefit experienced by the patient born SGA. This article reviews recent available studies on developmental risks in SGA, and then transforms the empirical findings into an integrated conceptual framework on the sources and mediators of neurocognitive and psychosocial outcomes in intrauterine growth retardation and SGA. This framework depicts two distinct therapeutic pathways by which GH therapy may improve neurocognitive and behavioural outcomes. The first (‘traditional’) pathway is the prevention of exposure to short-stature-related stressors via an improvement in growth velocity and final height. The second pathway refers to potential metabolic, and thus neurotropic and psychotropic, effects of GH binding at receptors in the central nervous system, thus changing neuronal activity. To date, the existence and potential mechanisms of such physiologically and not psychologically mediated effects of GH on neurocognitive functioning in SGA patients remain hypothetical. Copyright © 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]