Search

Background: Sleep problems are common in young people. Yet brief screening measures to identify those most in need of an intervention are lacking. This study investigated the potential of the two-item Sleep Condition Indicator (SCI-02) for screening insomnia symptoms in children and adolescents. We sought to establish whether there are distinct subgroups with different sleep profiles and whether subgroup membership varied with gender and school year group., Methods: Students (school years 5-13; typical age 9-18 years) in England completed the OxWell Student Survey in 2021. Sleep measures included: SCI-02, sleep onset latency (SOL), sleep duration, daytime sleepiness, and worry disrupting sleep. Latent profile analysis and multinomial logistic regression explored sleep profiles and predicted class membership., Results: In total, 29,304 participants answered sleep items. Of these, 95% provided binary gender (n = 27,802, 55% female) for analyses. Five sleep profiles emerged. The profiles, labelled "good", "moderate", or "poor" sleepers, vary by sleep quality - which includes time taken to fall asleep (SOL), amount of sleep (sleep duration), and the disruption of sleep due to worry. The profiles are then further differentiated by high levels of daytime sleepiness - labelled "sleepy". "Good Sleepers" (18,355, 66%), "Moderate Sleepers" (4825, 17.4%), "Moderate Sleepy Sleepers" (1250, 4.5%), "Poor Sleepers" (1037, 3.7%) and "Poor Sleepy Sleepers" (2335, 8.4%). Probable insomnia rates (SCI-02 ≤ 2) were high in both poor sleeper profiles (70-80%) compared with other profiles (0%) and the sample overall (9%). Compared with "Good Sleepers", all other profiles were mostly female. Daytime sleepiness - the defining characteristic of the sleepy sleeper profiles - was more common in secondary school participants than primary school., Conclusions: The SCI-02 is an efficient, two-question measure to screen for potential sleep problems in young people. Sleep disruption was high: one in ten were experiencing poor sleep. Females and adolescents appeared more vulnerable to poor sleep and daytime sleepiness. The SCI-02 has the potential for use in school and community contexts to identify children and adolescents who may benefit from support managing their sleep., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

To be able to develop effective policy and targeted support for children and young people, it is vital to develop and validate measures that enable us to understand what aspects of pandemics are associated with anxiety and stress across a wide age range. We examined the psychometric properties of the Pandemic Anxiety Scale- Parent-report (PAS-P), which measures levels of child and adolescent pandemic-related anxieties. Factor structure, reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity of the PAS-P was assessed in a convenience sample of parents/carers ( N-  = 8410) over at three time points in 2020 when COVID-19 case rates and restrictions varied. Factor structure was identified via two exploratory factor analyses (EFAs; n  = 5601 and n  = 1005) and then tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; n  = 800), measurement invariance tests, and a longitudinal CFA ( n  = 1651). Two factors structure for disease and consequence anxiety were observed across both EFAs and were found to have good fit in the CFAs. The PAS-P demonstrated good internal consistency and discriminant validity, as well as partial scalar invariance in latent construct measurement across child age, gender, and time. The PAS-P is a robust parent-report measure of two distinct forms of pandemic-related anxiety, suitable for reporting on children and adolescents aged 4-16 years. Although the scale has been validated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not limited to this specific pandemic and, with minor wording modifications, may be a reliable tool in other health epidemic contexts., Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-024-06784-x., Competing Interests: Competing interestsThe authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

Human visual attention is readily captured by the social information in scenes. Multiple studies have shown that social areas of interest (AOIs) such as faces and bodies attract more attention than non-social AOIs (e.g., objects or background). However, whether this attentional bias is moderated by the presence (or absence) of a social interaction remains unclear. Here, the gaze of 70 young adults was tracked during the free viewing of 60 naturalistic scenes. All photographs depicted two people, who were either interacting or not. Analyses of dwell time revealed that more attention was spent on human than background AOIs in the interactive pictures. In non-interactive pictures, however, dwell time did not differ between AOI type. In the time-to-first-fixation analysis, humans always captured attention before other elements of the scene, although this difference was slightly larger in interactive than non-interactive scenes. These findings confirm the existence of a bias towards social information in attentional capture and suggest our attention values social interactions beyond the presence of two people.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruption to the lives of children and their families. Pre-school children may have been particularly vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic, with the closure of childcare facilities, playgrounds, playcentres and parent and toddler groups limiting their opportunities for social interaction at a crucial stage of development. Additionally, for parents working from home, caring for pre-school aged children who require high levels of support and care, was likely challenging. We conducted an intensive longitudinal, but not nationally representative, study to examine trajectories of pre-schoolers' mental symptoms in the United Kingdom during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic., Methods: UK-based parents and carers ( n  = 1520) of pre-school-aged children (2-4 years) completed monthly online surveys about their pre-schoolers' mental health between April 2020 and March 2021. The survey examined changes in children's emotional symptoms, conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention., Results: In our final mixed-effects models, our predictors (fixed effects) accounted for 5% of the variance in each of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and hyperactivity/inattention symptoms scores, and the combined random and fixed effects accounted for between 64% and 73% of the variance. Pre-schoolers' emotional problems and hyperactivity/inattention symptoms declined from April through summer 2020 and then increased again during the autumn and winter 2020/2021 as lockdowns were re-introduced. Pre-schoolers who attended childcare showed greater decline in symptom severity than those who did not. Older children, compared to younger, showed greater lability of emotion symptom severity. Attending childcare predicted lower symptom severity across all three domains of conduct problems, emotional symptoms, and hyperactivity/inattention, while the opposite pattern was observed for children whose parent had a mental health problem., Conclusions: Our findings reinforce the importance of examining pre-schoolers' mental health in the context of micro and macro-level factors. Interventions focussing on family factors such as parent mental health, as well as continued provision of childcare, may have most potential to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on young children's mental health., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© 2023 The Authors. JCPP Advances published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Background: The threats to health, associated restrictions and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been linked to increases in mental health difficulties for many. Parents, in particular, have experienced many challenges such as having to combine work with home-schooling their children and other caring responsibilities. Yet, it remains unclear how parental mental health has changed throughout the pandemic or what factors may have mitigated or compounded the impact of the pandemic on parents' mental health., Methods: We examined monthly survey data from two linked UK-based longitudinal studies: COVID-19: Supporting Parents, Adolescents and Children during Epidemics' (Co-SPACE) and COVID-19: Supporting Parents and Young Children during Epidemics' (Co-SPYCE). Data from 5576 parents/carers of 2-17-year-old children collected between April 2020 and January 2021 was analysed using mixed-effect modelling and latent class growth (mixture) modelling., Results: Parental stress and depression, but not anxiety, were higher during the periods of restrictions. This pattern was most pronounced for parents with primary-school-aged children, those that worked at home or had other adults in the household. Being younger, reporting secondary or below education, working out of home, having secondary-school-aged children or children with special education needs (SEN)/neurodevelopmental disorders (ND) further moderated whether, how and when parental mental health symptoms changed. Although around three quarters of parents reported consistently low mental health symptoms, a substantial minority reported consistently high or increasing symptoms of anxiety, stress and depression. The latter were more likely to be parents who were younger than average, were a single adult in the household, had a pre-existing mental health diagnosis or had a child with special educational needs or a ND., Conclusions: These findings emphasise how different personal circumstances and pre-existing inequalities shaped how parents were affected by this unprecedented global pandemic and highlight the need for support and consideration to meet the needs of families in the future., Competing Interests: Polly Waite is funded by an NIHR Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (PDF‐2016‐09‐092). Cathy Creswell is supported by the Oxford and Thames Valley NIHR Applied Research Collaboration. Helen Dodd is supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/S017909/1). The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The remaining authors have declared that they have no competing or potential conflicts of interest., (© 2023 The Authors. JCPP Advances published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Background: A major concern throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been on young people's experiences with mental health. In this study we mapped children and adolescents' mental health trajectories over 13 months of the pandemic and examine whether family, peer, and individual-level factors were associated with trajectory membership., Methods: This study focuses on a sub-sample from the Co-SPACE study of 3322 children and adolescents (aged 4-16 years) for whom parents completed a survey at Time 0 and at least one follow-up survey between March 2020 and May 2021. We used growth mixture models to examine trajectories in emotional, conduct, and hyperactivity/inattention difficulties using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and multinomial logistic regression models to estimate factors associated with individual trajectory membership., Results: The average trend in young people's mental health appeared to follow changes in national guidelines regarding the pandemic. Distinct trends in GMM models highlighting individual differences showed that a 5-trajectory model best explained the changes in emotional problems whilst 4-trajectory models best explained variation in hyperactivity/inattention and conduct problems. While most young people followed low stable (62%-85%) or moderate stable (28%) symptom trajectories, 14%-31% experienced very high, high stable or increasing mental health difficulties. Young people following high stable trajectories were more likely to have special educational needs and/or neurodevelopmental disorders, parents reporting higher levels of distress and parent-child conflict, and were less likely to have at least one close friend., Conclusions: Most young people adapted well and experienced low stable symptoms, but nearly one third experienced high stable or increasing mental health difficulties. Young people with complex needs and parents with higher psychological distress were particularly vulnerable to high stable problems while those with positive peer relationships were less vulnerable. This study offers insight into potential factors that can be addressed using targeted interventions to improve the wellbeing of parents and young people in the event of future lockdowns and school closures., Competing Interests: Carolina Guzman Holst, Lucy Bowes, Polly Waite, Simona Skripkauskaite, Adrienne Shum, Samantha Pearcey, Jasmine Raw, Praveetha Patalay, Cathy Creswell, report no conflicts of interest., (© 2023 The Authors. JCPP Advances published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Background: The shift in the last decades to screen-based and increasingly web-based gaming activity has raised concerns about its impact on the development of children and adolescents. Despite decades of research into gaming and related psychosocial effects, the question remains how best to identify what degree or context of gaming may be a cause for concern., Objective: This study aimed to classify adolescents into gamer profiles based on both gaming behaviors and well-being. Once we distinguished the different gamer profiles, we aimed to explore whether membership to a specific profile could be predicted based on a range of personal characteristics and experiences that could then help identify those at risk., Methods: We explored gaming and well-being in an adolescent school population (aged 12-18 years) in England as part of the 2021 OxWell student survey. Self-report measures of time spent playing games on computers or consoles, time spent playing games on mobile phones, the Game Addiction Scale, and the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale were used to classify adolescent heavy gamers (playing games for at least 3.5 hours a day) using latent profile analysis. We used multinomial logistic regression analysis to predict the profile membership based on a range of personal characteristics and experiences., Results: In total, 12,725 participants answered the OxWell gaming questions. Almost one-third (3970/12,725, 31.2%) indicated that they play games for at least 3.5 hours a day. The correlation between time spent playing video games overall and well-being was not significant (P=.41). The latent profile analysis distinguished 6 profiles of adolescent heavy gamers: adaptive computer gamers (1747/3970, 44%); casual computer gamers (873/3970, 22%); casual phone gamers (595/3970, 15%); unknown device gamers (476/3970, 12%); maladaptive computer gamers (238/3970, 6%); and maladaptive phone gamers (79/3970, 2%). In comparison with adaptive computer gamers, maladaptive phone gamers were mostly female (odds ratio [OR] 0.08, 95% CI 0.03-0.21) and were more likely to have experienced abuse or neglect (OR 3.18, 95% CI 1.34-7.55). Maladaptive computer gamers, who reported gaming both on their mobile phones and on the computer, were mostly male and more likely to report anxiety (OR 2.25, 95% CI 1.23-4.12), aggressive behavior (OR 2.83, 95% CI 1.65-4.88), and web-based gambling (OR 2.18, 95% CI 1.24-3.81)., Conclusions: A substantial number of adolescents are spending ≥3.5 hours gaming each day, with almost 1 in 10 (317/3970, 8%) reporting co-occurring gaming and well-being issues. Long hours gaming using mobile phones, particularly common in female gamers, may signal poorer functioning and indicate a need for additional support. Although increased time gaming might be changing how adolescents spend their free time and might thus have public health implications, it does not seem to relate to co-occurring well-being issues or mental ill-health for the majority of adolescent gamers., (©Simona Skripkauskaite, Mina Fazel, the OxWell Study Team. Originally published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting (https://pediatrics.jmir.org), 18.11.2022.)

Lay Abstract: Previous research has shown that autistic individuals look at other people less and orient to them more slowly than others. Yet, it is still unclear if this represents general visual differences (e.g. slower looking at any new information, social or not) or a uniquely social difference (e.g. only slower looking to humans but not objects). Here, we aimed to examine how quickly autistic and non-autistic adults look to and away from social (i.e. faces) and non-social information (i.e. squares and houses). We used an attentional shifting task with two images where sometimes the first image disappears before the new image appears (makes it easier to notice the new image) and other times it stays on the screen when the new image appears. In Experiment 1, we showed schematic faces and squares to 27 autistic and 26 non-autistic adults, and in Experiment 2, we showed photographs of faces and houses to 18 autistic and 17 non-autistic adults. In general, autistic adults looked at the new non-social or social images similarly to non-autistic adults. Yet, only autistic adults looked at new social information faster when the first image disappeared before the new image appeared. This shows that autistic individuals may find it easier to notice new social information if their attention is not already occupied.

Competing Interests: This research was funded by the UK Research and Innovation and the Westminster Foundation. PW is funded by a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (PDF-2016-09-092). CC is supported by the NIHR Oxford and Thames Valley Applied Research Collaboration. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the UK Department of Health and Social Care.

This study investigated parental influences on preschool children's healthy and unhealthy snacking in relation to child obesity in a large cross-sectional multinational sample. Parents and 3-5 year-old child dyads ( n = 5185) in a kindergarten-based study provided extensive sociodemographic, dietary practice and food intake data. Parental feeding practices that were derived from questionnaires were examined for associations with child healthy and unhealthy snacking in adjusted multilevel models, including child estimated energy expenditure, parental education, and nutritional knowledge. Parental healthy and unhealthy snacking was respectively associated with their children's snacking (both p < 0.0001). Making healthy snacks available to their children was specifically associated with greater child healthy snack intake ( p < 0.0001). Conversely, practices that were related to unhealthy snacking, i.e., being permissive about unhealthy snacking and acceding to child demands for unhealthy snacks, were associated with greater consumption of unhealthy snacks by children, but also less intake of healthy snacks (all p < 0.0001). Parents having more education and greater nutritional knowledge of snack food recommendations had children who ate more healthy snacks (all p < 0.0001) and fewer unhealthy snacks ( p = 0.002, p < 0.0001, respectively). In the adjusted models, child obesity was not related to healthy or unhealthy snack intake in these young children. The findings support interventions that address parental practices and distinguish between healthy and unhealthy snacking to influence young children's dietary patterns., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.