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Introduction and objective: Mental Health Literacy (MHL) is important in promoting youth mental health. One key aspect of MHL is knowledge about mental disorders, which is particularly relevant for populations at risk for developing mental disorders, such as children of parents with a mental illness (COPMI), representing a mechanism within the transgenerational transmission. Currently, COPMI's level of disorder knowledge in general, and about the specific parental disorder has not been comprehensively researched. We, therefore, aimed to assess COPMI's disorder knowledge and clarify its association with COPMI's age and sex exploratively. To assess both general and disorder-specific knowledge, we took a novel approach that makes disorder knowledge comparable across samples and over time. Methods: A mixed method analysis of N = 181 semi-structured MHL interviews with COPMI (aged 5 to 17 years) was carried out in the COMPARE--family study in Germany. We conducted a DSM-oriented deductive qualitative content analysis to assess COPMI's general and specific disorder knowledge. Chi-square tests served to identify age and sex differences. Results: Children revealed limited knowledge of mental disorders in general, whereas adolescents displayed more knowledge that was also partly consistent with descriptions of classification systems like the DSM-5. The level of specific knowledge about the parent's disorder depended on the disorder group. More children displayed adequate knowledge of somatic and anxiety disorders compared to trauma and depressive disorders, and more adolescents displayed adequate knowledge of depressive and anxiety disorders. COPMI's age and sex were found to be significantly associated with disorder knowledge: adolescents exhibited higher levels of adequate general and specific disorder knowledge, and males exhibited higher levels of adequate general disorder knowledge. Conclusion: Assessing COPMI's disorder knowledge and identifying associated age and sex differences yield valuable insights into the knowledge component of the MHL theory. Our findings can help to improve psychoeducational interventions for COPMI by orienting them to their prevailing levels of disorder knowledge. We recommend employing and extending the DSM-oriented deductive approach to assess knowledge within MHL. Analyses involving additional assessments within the COMPARE--family study are in preparation to identify potential knowledge gains over time, and associations to COPMI's own well-being and mental health symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DSM-5 classifies Selective Mutism (SM) among anxiety disorders, and a majority of children with SM comply with symptomatology of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). It is still discussed whether SM constitutes a discrete disorder entity or merely an extreme form of SAD. Past research that compared anxiety levels in both disorders resulted in conflicting conclusions, which might be due to the adoption of questionnaire measures or experimental designs that comprised in vivo situations. In vivo situations contain the possibility to avoid the feared situations for children with SM by remaining silent, which is not true for children with SAD. Participants aged eight to 18 years (M = 13.30 years, SD = 3.26) with above cut-off symptomatology in SM (n = 52), SAD (n = 18), and typical development (n = 41) participated in an online-based study. They evaluated 21 videos with neutral, embarrassing, or speech-demanding situations with respect to their anxiety elicitation. There was no general difference in anxiety levels between participants with elevated SM and SAD symptomatology, and both groups rated embarrassing situations similarly. However, only children with SM features experienced speech-demanding situations as anxiety eliciting, as embarrassing situations and more so than participants in both other groups. Results of the present study indicate that SM is an anxiety disorder with a specific anxiety pattern rather than an extreme form of SAD. In addition to typical social phobic situations, interventions for children with SM should also address situations involving speech demands., Author(s): Christina Schwenck [sup.1] , Angelika Gensthaler [sup.2] , Felix Vogel [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.8664.c, 0000 0001 2165 8627, Department of Special Needs Educational and Clinical Child and Adolescent [...]

Objective: Facial emotion recognition (FER) is a fundamental social skill essential for adaptive social behaviors, emotional development, and overall well-being. FER impairments have been linked to various mental disorders, making it a critical transdiagnostic mechanism influencing the development and trajectory of mental disorders. FER has also been found to play a role in the transgenerational transmission of mental disorders, with the majority of research suggesting FER impairments in children of parents with amental illness (COPMI). Previous research primarily concentrated on COPMI of parents with internalizing disorders, which does not cover the full spectrum of outpatient mental health service populations. Furthermore, research focuses on varying components of FER by using different assessment paradigms, making it challenging to compare study results. To address these gaps, we comprehensively investigated FER abilities in COPMI usingmultiple tasks varying in task characteristics. Methods: We included 189 children, 77 COPMI and 112 children of parents without a diagnosed mental illness (COPWMI), aged 6 to 16 years. We assessed FER using three tasks with varying task demands: an emotional Go/NoGo task, a morphing task, and a task presenting short video sequences depicting different emotions. We fitted separate two-level hierarchical Bayesian models (to account for sibling pairs in our sample) for reaction times and accuracy rates for each task. Good model fit was assured by comparing models using varying priors. Results: Contrary to our expectations, our results revealed no general FER deficit in COPMI compared to COPWMI. The Bayesian models fitted for accuracy in the morphing task and Go/NoGo task yielded small yet significant effects. However, Bayes factors fitted for the models suggested that these effects could be due to random variations or noise in the data. Conclusions: Our study does not support FER impairments as a general feature of COPMI. Instead, individual factors, such as the type of parental disorder and the timing of its onset, may play a crucial role in influencing FER development. Future research should consider these factors, taking into account the diverse landscape of parental mental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Although empathy is known to be a strength, recent studies suggest that empathy can be a risk factor for psychopathology under certain conditions in children. This study examines parental mental illness as such a condition. Further, it aims to investigate whether maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) mediates the relationship between empathy and psychopathological symptoms of children. Methods: Participants were 100 children of parents with a mental illness (55% female) and 87 children of parents without a mental illness (50% female) aged 6 - 16 years and their parents. Results: Greater cognitive empathy was related to more psychopathological symptoms in COPMI, but not in COPWMI. In addition, in COPMI maladaptive ER mediated this relationship. In contrast, greater affective empathy was associated with more psychopathological symptoms regardless of whether parents had a mental illness. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of implementing preventive programs for COPMI that specifically target the reduction of maladaptive ER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Children of parents with a mental illness are at heightened risk to develop a mental illness themselves due to genetics and environmental factors. Although parenting stress (PS) is known to be associated with increased psychopathology in parents and children, there is no study investigating PS multimodally in a sample of parents with a mental illness. This study aims to compare PS of parents with and without a mental illness and further to examine the relationship between PS and psychopathology of children. Methods: Participants were parents with a mental illness and parents without a mental illness and their children aged four to sixteen years. We assessed PS multimodally using a questionnaire, parents' evaluation of children's behavior (relational schemas) and psychophysiological arousal of parents during free speech task. Results: Self-reported PS was increased, and evaluation of children's behavior was more negative and less positive in parents with a mental illness compared to parents without a mental illness. Children's psychopathology was associated with self-reported PS and relational schemas of parents. Regarding psychophysiological arousal, parents with a mental illness showed reduced reactivity in heart rate from baseline to free speech task in comparison to parents without a mental illness. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of implementing intervention programs to reduce PS for parents and children. In particular, parents with a mental illness might benefit from specific intervention programs in order to interrupt the transgenerational transmission of mental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several cognitive deficits associated with reading and mathematics problems have been identified. However, only few studies assessed the impact of these variables in children with combined problems in reading and arithmetics, and none of these studies included children with low IQ. This longitudinal study was designed to assess the impact of different cognitive variables as well as socioeconomic status on literacy and mathematics development of elementary school children with different kinds of learning problems and IQ levels over the course of 2 years. A total of six subgroups was selected from a total sample of 929 second-grade children, with the subgroups differing according to their IQ level and the type of learning disorder. The subgroups consisted of initially 24 reading disabled, 22 mathematics disabled, 35 combined, and 29 low- and 28 overachieving children, as well as 28 typically developing children. Participants were repeatedly assessed in regard to their literacy, mathematics, IQ as well as specific and general cognitive variables. Overall, reading problems were linked to deficits in phonological awareness, while mathematics problems were linked to memory and attention deficits. Children with combined problems showed additive deficits in phonological awareness and attention. The same applied for low-achieving children who were additionally characterized by low socioeconomic status. Good phonological awareness served as a protective factor in overachieving children. The correlation of cognitive variables and group membership was more pronounced at the end of elementary school than in grade 2. Our results confirm an additive approach of cognitive deficits in children with combined learning problems. Phonological awareness constitutes not only a risk factor for learning problems but also a protective factor for good academic achievement in children with low IQ.

Background: A deficit in empathy is discussed to underlie difficulties in social interaction of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and conduct disorder (CD). To date, no study has compared children with ASD and different subtypes of CD to describe disorder-specific empathy profiles in clinical samples. Furthermore, little is known about age influences on the development of empathic skills. The aim of the current study was to compare cognitive and emotional empathy in different age groups of children with ASD, CD with elevated or low callous-unemotional-traits (CU+ vs. CU-) and a matched control group (CG). Methods: Fifty-five boys with ASD, 36 boys with CD-CU+, 34 boys with CD-CU- and 67 controls were included. The study implemented three tasks on emotion recognition, perspective taking and emotional affection induced by another person's situation. Multivariate Analysis of variance with the factors group and age (median split) including their interaction term was performed to describe disorder-specific profiles. Results: Empathy profiles showed differential impairment in children with ASD and CD-CU+. Boys with ASD were impaired in cognitive empathy while participants with CD-CU+ were impaired in emotional empathy. Children with CD-CU- did not differ from the CG. However, boys with CD-CU- were less emotionally reactive in response to film stimuli than children with ASD. Furthermore, we found strong age effects indicating an increase in cognitive and affective empathic skills beyond early infancy in all groups. Conclusions: In this study, distinct empathic profiles in children with ASD and CD-CU+ were found. Furthermore, the work demonstrates improvement of empathic skills throughout childhood and adolescence, which is comparable for individuals with psychiatric disorders and control children. These results yield implications for further research as well as for therapeutic interventions.

Children who were 4 to 8 years of age were asked to perform a sort-recall task where only half of the items had to be studied and remembered. Following a baseline trial, children were assigned to 1 of 3 groups and were prompted to use either a sorting or a clustering strategy (experimental groups) or were not prompted at all (control group). Children were seen 2 weeks later and given a new set of items for the transfer-of-training sort-recall phases. Levels of recall and strategy use (sorting, clustering, multiple strategy use) were higher for older children, typical items, sorting prompts, and trials with repeated presentations of test materials. Older children used more strategies than younger children, although even 4-year-olds used more than one strategy when performing the memory tasks. Results of multivariate cluster analyses revealed systematic individual differences, separating low performers from production-deficient children and high performers. Overall, findings show that clustering appears to be an early developing, but less effective strategy, with multiple-strategy use and especially sorting being used more frequently and effectively by older children. (Contains 1 footnote, 9 tables and 10 figures.)

Factors that influence the incidence of utilization deficiencies and other recall/strategy-use patterns on a strategic memory task were evaluated in two hundred and fourteen 7- and 9-year-old children. Both utilization deficiencies and the incidence of children showing increases in both recall and strategy use over phases were more likely to be observed on phase transitions involving prompting or when different lists of items were included on consecutive trials; in contrast, increases in recall in the absence of increases in strategy use were more likely to be found between trials consisting of the same stimulus items. This research clearly indicates that patterns of recall/strategy-use relations, including utilization deficiencies, vary meaningfully with the age of the child and a variety of contextual factors.