Faculty Bibliography

IMPORTANCE/UNASSIGNED:Representation of race and ethnicity in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) is critical for understanding treatment efficacy across populations with different racial and ethnic backgrounds. OBJECTIVE/UNASSIGNED:To examine race and ethnicity representation and reporting across RCTs of pharmacotherapies for mental disorders. DATA SOURCES/UNASSIGNED:PubMed (Medline), Embase (Ovid), APA PsycInfo, and Web of Science were searched until March 1, 2024, to retrieve network meta-analyses including RCTs of pharmacotherapies for International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision mental disorders. STUDY SELECTION/UNASSIGNED:RCTs that recruited people of any age with a diagnosis of a mental disorder and that tested the efficacy of any pharmacologic intervention vs any control arm. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS/UNASSIGNED:Random-effects logit-transformed proportion meta-analyses were used to estimate prevalence rates of race and ethnicity groups and their temporal trends across RCTs and to compare US RCT prevalence rates with US Census data. The Preferred Reporting Items for Overviews of Reviews was used to report our review. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES/UNASSIGNED:Reporting of data and percentages of race and ethnicity. The year of publication, type of RCT, geographic location, age group, and sample size were also included. There were no deviations that occurred from the original protocol. RESULTS/UNASSIGNED:Data were obtained from 1683 RCTs (375 120 participants in total). Of these, 1363 (91.7% of participants) included participants aged 18 years or older; 680 RCTs (36.0% of participants) were from the US, 404 (17.1% of participants) were from Europe, and 293 (29.9% of participants) were from multiple geographic locations. Race and ethnicity were reported in 39.2% of RCTs; reporting was the highest in US-based RCTs (58.7%) and lowest in Central and South America (8.7%) and Asia and the Middle East (12.4%). Among participants, 2.7% (95% CI, 2.1%-3.5%) self-reported as Asian, 9.0% (95% CI, 8.1%-10.0%) as Black, 11.0% (95% CI, 9.1%-13.3%) as Hispanic among White, 80.2% (95% CI, 78.8%-81.5%) as White including Hispanic, and 5.8% (95% CI, 5.2%-6.4%) as other race or ethnicity, multiracial, or multiethnic. There was more frequent reporting of race and ethnicity in US RCTs (log odds increased by 0.066 each year) and less frequent reporting in non-US RCTs (log odds increased by 0.023 each year). Studies reporting race and ethnicity did not generally include larger sample sizes (mean sample size, 263.7 [95% CI, 15.0-860.3] participants) compared with those not reporting such data (mean sample size, 196.6 [95% CI, 12.0-601.3] participants), albeit not in all locations. In US RCTs, adults in the other or multiracial and multiethnic category were historically overrepresented, while adults in Asian, Black, Hispanic among White, and White including Hispanic categories were underrepresented; Asian, Black, and Hispanic among White children and adolescents are still currently underrepresented. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE/UNASSIGNED:The findings of this meta-analysis suggest that differences in reporting race and ethnicity across geographic locations and underrepresentation of certain racial and ethnic groups in US-based RCTs highlight the need for international guidelines to ensure equitable recruitment and reporting in clinical trials.

Parental support and acceptance are strong protective factors for better mental health outcomes among transgender and gender diverse youth. Psychological inflexibility, specifically in the role of parenting, or "parenting inflexibility", refers to an over-reliance on avoidance strategies at the expense of parenting values. Parenting inflexibility may be related to parental support, making it a useful target of intervention for parents of transgender youth. The aim of the present study was to develop a brief clinically useful measure of parenting inflexibility based on a synthesis of existing measures and to evaluate the psychometric properties across two study populations. Study 1 used exploratory factor analysis to examine this measure among parents in the general population recruited using MTurk. Study 2 used confirmatory factor analysis to examine the measure among parents of transgender youth recruited from a clinic. The final measure, the Impact of Parenting Avoidance (IPA) scale, is a one-factor 7-item measure of parenting inflexibility that is easy to administer and interpret in a pediatric health setting. The resulting measure demonstrated acceptable reliability, and it was significantly correlated with important outcome variables, such as negative parenting practices and lower perceived parental support among transgender and gender diverse youth.

UNLABELLED:Research supports an association between diet and health, and emerging evidence suggests that diet is associated with neuropsychiatric symptoms. However, no human study has examined an anti-inflammatory diet across rigorously defined psychiatric diagnoses and its associations with symptom severity and cognition. As inflammation is implicated in mental illness, we investigated adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD), an anti-inflammatory diet, and the standard American diet (SAD), and examined cross-sectional relationships with psychiatric symptoms and cognition. METHOD/METHODS:Participants included 54 individuals with psychotic disorders, 30 with non-psychosis affective disorders and 40 healthy controls. Participants underwent diagnostic interviews, PANSS symptom ratings, and MATRICS cognitive assessments. The self-report GBAQ was used to assess adherence to the MD versus SAD. RESULTS:The psychosis group was significantly more likely to consume the SAD than healthy controls (p = 0.007), with MD adherence predicting better working memory (r = 0.461, p < 0.001). In the non-psychosis affective disorders group, MD adherence predicted slower processing speed (r = -0.376, p = 0.049). In the non-psychosis affective disorders group, MD predicted reduced PANSS General Psychopathology scale (r = -0.449, p = 0.013), as well as the Activation (r = -0.362, p = 0.049), and Dysphoric Mood factors (r = -0.403, p = 0.027). DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS:This first-of-its kind study identified poor dietary choices in persons with psychosis, showing significantly lower symptoms and better cognition in association with the MD in transdiagnostic analyses. It supports the study of dietary interventions for prevention and treatment of psychiatric conditions.

BACKGROUND:Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is highly heritable and phenotypically variable. Neuroimaging markers reflecting variation in behavior will provide insights into circuitry subserving core features. We examined functional correlates of ASD symptomology at school-age, while accounting for associated behavioral and cognitive domains, in a longitudinal sample followed from infancy and enriched for those with a genetic liability for ASD. METHODS:Resting state functional connectivity MRIs (fcMRI) and behavioral data were analyzed from 97 school-age children (8.1-12.0 years, 55 males, 15 ASD) with (n = 63) or without (n = 34) a family history of ASD. fcMRI enrichment analysis (EA) was used to screen for associations between network-level functional connectivity and six behaviors of interest in a data-driven manner: social affect, restricted and repetitive behavior (RRB), generalized anxiety, inattention, motor coordination, and matrix reasoning. RESULTS:Functional connectivity between the visual and salience networks was significantly associated with social affect symptoms at school-age after accounting for all other behaviors. Results indicated that stronger connectivity was associated with higher social affect scores. No other behaviors were robustly associated with functional connectivity, though trends were observed between visual-salience connectivity and RRBs. CONCLUSIONS:Connectivity between the visual and salience networks may play an important role in social affect symptom variability among children with ASD and those with genetic liability for ASD. These findings align with and extend earlier reports in this sample of the central role of the visual system during infancy in ASD.

OBJECTIVE:Rates of suicide, anxiety, and depression have soared in US youth, and professional organizations strongly urge earlier identification, particularly in pediatric emergency departments (PEDs). However, there are few commonly used suicide screeners that also identify other mental health (MH) problems. A new, electronically administered instrument, the K-CAT, screens for suicide and multiple MH problems. We hypothesized that the K-CAT would enhance suicide identification compared with routine screening and identify significant anxiety and depression in youth presenting with non-MH chief complaints. METHODS:This observational study was conducted in 2 PEDs. Eligible youth were 7 to 17 accompanied by a caregiver without: severe medical concerns, difficult behaviors, limited verbal language, or only a psychiatric complaint. Of the 341 eligible, 241 (70.7%) were screened, and 228 both presented with a non-MH problem and had complete K-CAT data. A Fisher exact test determined whether suicidal behaviors/ideation rates differed between the K-CAT and retrospective chart review data. RESULTS:Seventy-four or 32.46% of youth scored positive for suicide, anxiety, and/or depression on the K-CAT. Females were more likely to screen positive (P<0.001). Compared with the retrospective data, more youth were identified with suicide risk by the K-CAT (3.95% vs. 0%; P=0.004). Youth identified by the K-CAT were 62.5% female and 33.3% 7 to 11 years. CONCLUSIONS:The K-CAT increases the identification of suicidal ideation and behaviors overall and in younger children. It identifies significant rates of depression and anxiety in youth and could be an important first step in identifying MH problems in youth.

INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND:People with low socioeconomic status (SES) or serious psychological distress (SPD) in the U.S. face ongoing and future disparities in tobacco smoking. We sought to estimate how smoking disparities contribute to disparities in life expectancy and aggregate life-years in these marginalized subpopulations. METHODS:We used the Simulation of Tobacco and Nicotine Outcomes and Policy (STOP) microsimulation model to project life expectancy as a function of subpopulation (low SES, higher SES, SPD, or non-SPD) and cigarette smoking status. Low SES was defined as having at least one of the following: income below poverty, less than high school education, or Medicaid insurance. Higher SES individuals belonged to none of these categories. SPD was defined as Kessler-6 score ≥ 13; non-SPD was a Kessler-6 score < 13. To project individual life expectancy losses from smoking, we simulated 40-year-olds stratified by gender, subpopulation (by SES or by SPD, with no change), and smoking status (current/never, with no change). To project time to reach 5% cigarette smoking prevalence (U.S.) - reflecting one tobacco "endgame" threshold - in each subpopulation, we simulated the entire subpopulations of people with low SES, higher SES, SPD, and non-SPD, incorporating corresponding distributions of gender, age, and smoking status and accounting for changes in smoking behaviors and secular smoking trends. We then estimated total life-years accumulated under status quo and alternate scenarios in which smoking dynamics in the marginalized subpopulations matched those of their less marginalized counterparts. RESULTS:The model showed that, for individuals with low SES or SPD, smoking is associated with substantial loss of life expectancy (9.8-11.5y). Marginalized subpopulations would reach 5% smoking prevalence 20y (low SES) and 17y (SPD) sooner if smoking trends mirrored their less marginalized counterparts; these differences result in 5.3 million (low SES) and 966,000 (SPD) excess life-years lost over 40y. CONCLUSIONS:Differences in cigarette smoking portend substantial ongoing and future disparities in life expectancy and time to reach 5% smoking prevalence. Reducing tobacco-related disparities in the U.S. will require an explicitly equity-focused vision, and the tobacco endgame will only be truly achieved when it includes all groups.

BACKGROUND:HIV status disclosure remains a major challenge among children living with perinatally acquired HIV with many taking treatment up to adolescence without knowing their serostatus. This non-disclosure is influenced by factors like fear of the negative consequences of disclosure. Since HIV status disclosure has been found to have good effects including improving treatment adherence and better mental health outcomes, there is a need to design interventions aimed at improving disclosure rates among children living with HIV. This study aims at adapting a clinic-based pediatric HIV status disclosure intervention and tasking shifting from healthcare workers to caregiver peer supporters in Eastern Uganda. METHODS:The adaptation process involved consultations with caregivers, healthcare workers involved in the care of children living with HIV, researchers in this field, intervention developers, and other experts and stakeholders. This was done through conducting FGDs with HCWs, caregivers, and peer supporters and consultations with researchers in the field of HIV. The original intervention manual was translated to Lusoga which is the commonly spoken dialect in this region. Collected qualitative data were analyzed using an inductive approach to develop themes and subthemes. Written informed consent will be obtained from all participants before participation in the study. RESULTS:A total of 28 participants were involved in the FGDs, while two pediatricians and two HIV researchers/specialists were consulted. Six themes were generated in relation to all suggested changes to the original manual which were related to: (1) sociocultural beliefs/norms/perceptions (5 FGDs), (2) boosting caregiver's confidence for disclosure (5FGDs), (3) disclosure mode, environment, and person (4 FGDs), (4) health facility/system related changes (3 FGDs), (5) reorganization/paraphrasing (3FGDs) and (6) age appropriateness (2FGDs). CONCLUSION/CONCLUSIONS:This study emphasized that whereas some aspects of intervention can apply to various contexts, there is a need for cross-cultural adaptation of interventions before being implemented in settings where they were not developed.

OBJECTIVES/OBJECTIVE:To document the proportion of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth presenting to a pediatric psychiatric emergency department (ED) and examine whether their demographic and clinical characteristics differ from cisgender youth. METHODS:We analyzed electronic health records of youth ages 5 to 17 years presenting to a specialized pediatric psychiatric ED (N = 2728), including sociodemographic characteristics, gender identity, suicidal risk at admission, and diagnoses at discharge. We examined differences by gender identity using χ2 tests (categorical variables), 2-sample t tests, or Mann-Whitney U tests (continuous variables). Adjusted Poisson regression models estimated the prevalence ratio of the association between gender identity and clinical diagnoses. RESULTS:Of youth, 6% seeking emergency psychiatric care identified as TGD. Compared with cisgender peers, TGD youth exhibited a higher risk for suicide, longer hospital stays, and received more psychiatric diagnoses at discharge, including a higher prevalence of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (prevalence ratio: 1.50, 95% CI: 1.16, 1.90). CONCLUSIONS:TGD youth have more severe clinical presentations in the psychiatric ED compared with cisgender youth. Further research is essential to develop targeted interventions to support the mental health of TGD youth.