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Conduct Disorder (CD) is an impairing psychiatric disorder of childhood and adolescence characterized by aggressive and dissocial behavior. Environmental factors such as maternal smoking during pregnancy, socio-economic status, trauma, or early life stress are associated with CD. Although the number of females with CD is rising in Western societies, CD is under-researched in female cohorts. We aimed at exploring the epigenetic signature of females with CD and its relation to psychosocial and environmental risk factors. We performed HpaII sensitive genome-wide methylation sequencing of 49 CD girls and 50 matched typically developing controls and linear regression models to identify differentially methylated CpG loci (tags) and regions. Significant tags and regions were mapped to the respective genes and tested for enrichment in pathways and brain developmental processes. Finally, epigenetic signatures were tested as mediators for CD-associated risk factors. We identified a 12% increased methylation 5’ of the neurite modulator SLITRK5 ( FDR = 0.0046) in cases within a glucocorticoid receptor binding site. Functionally, methylation positively correlated with gene expression in lymphoblastoid cell lines. At systems-level, genes (uncorr. P < 0.01) were associated with development of neurons, neurite outgrowth or neuronal developmental processes. At gene expression level, the associated gene-networks are activated perinatally and during early childhood in neocortical regions, thalamus and striatum, and expressed in amygdala and hippocampus. Specifically, the epigenetic signatures of the gene network activated in the thalamus during early childhood correlated with the effect of parental education on CD status possibly mediating its protective effect. The differential methylation patterns identified in females with CD are likely to affect genes that are expressed in brain regions previously indicated in CD. We provide suggestive evidence that protective effects are likely mediated by epigenetic mechanisms impairing specific brain developmental networks and therefore exerting a long-term effect on neural functions in CD. Our results are exploratory and thus, further replication is needed.

Although autistic people have shown impairments in various learning and memory tasks, recent studies have reported mixed findings concerning implicit learning in ASD. Implicit skill learning, with its unconscious and statistical properties, underlies not only motor but also cognitive and social skills, and it therefore plays an important role from infancy to old age. We investigated probabilistic implicit sequence learning and its consolidation in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Three groups of children participated: thirteen with high-functioning ASD, 14 age-matched controls, and 13 IQ-matched controls. All were tested on the Alternating Serial Reaction Time Task (ASRT), making it possible to separate general skill learning from sequence-specific learning. The ASRT task was repeated after 16 hours. We found that control and ASD children showed similar sequence-specific and general skill learning in the learning phase. Consolidation of skill learning and sequence-specific learning were also intact in the ASD compared to the control groups. These results suggest that autistic children can use the effects/results of implicit learning not only for a short period, but also for a longer stretch of time. Using these findings, therapists can design more effective educational and rehabilitation programs.

Purpose An important question in child psychiatry is the agreement between parents and children. We studied mother–child concordance about the quality of life of children (QoL). We hypothesized that mothers of depressed children rate lower QoL than children for themselves while mothers of non-depressed children rate better QoL; that inter-informant agreement is higher in the non-depressed sample; and finally that agreement increases with age of the child. Methods QoL of depressed children ( N  = 248, mean age 11.45 years, SD 2.02) were compared to that of non-depressed children ( N = 1695, mean age 10.34 years, SD 2.19). QoL was examined by a 7 item questionnaire (ILK). Results Mothers of depressed children rated lower QoL than their children while mothers of nondepressed children rated higher QoL than their children. Agreement was low in both samples but higher in the controls. Inter-informant agreement was only influenced by depression. Conclusions Our results show that mothers relate more serious negative effects to childhood depression than their children and rate less problems for their non-depressed children compared to self-reports. Mother–child agreement is negatively influenced by depression which further stresses the importance of obtaining reports from the child and at least one parent in order to understand the subjective experiences caused by the illness.

Background Youth with conduct disorder (CD) and high callous‐unemotional (CU) traits are not a homogenous group and can be disaggregated into primary and secondary subgroups. However, there are inconsistencies in defining primary and secondary subgroups, with some studies using anxiety, others using maltreatment and still others using both features to identify subgroups. There is a paucity of work comparing primary and secondary subgroups with typically developing (TD) youth on experiences of maltreatment and parenting as well as a lack of studies investigating sex differences. Methods In a large sample of TD youth (n = 946, 66% female) and youth with CD (n = 885, 60% female), we used latent profile analysis in youth with CD aged between 9 and 18 years to address four aims: (i) to demonstrate how primary and secondary subgroup membership differs when anxiety, maltreatment, or both are used as continuous indicators, (ii) to compare primary and secondary subgroups with TD youth on abuse and neglect measures, and (iii) to compare primary and secondary subgroups with TD youth on parenting experiences, and (iv) to examine whether the results were consistent across sexes. Results Anxiety without maltreatment yielded the best fitting and most theoretically interpretable classification of primary and secondary subgroups across both sexes (Bayesian information criterion = 17832.33, Entropy = 0.75, Lo‐Mendell‐Rubin: p < 0.01). Compared with TD youth, youth with primary and secondary CU traits experienced greater levels of abuse and neglect (p < 0.001, η2p = 0.04−0.16) and maladaptive parenting practices (p < 0.001, η2p = 0.04−0.13). Youth with primary and secondary CU traits were equally high on levels of abuse, neglect, and maladaptive parenting (all p values >0.05). Conclusions We provide evidence that anxiety and maltreatment cannot be used interchangeably to identify youth with primary versus secondary CU traits. Anxiey yielded the best fitting and most theoretically interpretable classifications across both sexes. Our results signify the need for researchers and clinicians to adopt a unified approach to defining primary and secondary subgroups of CU traits using anxiety in both sexes. We investigated latent classes of typically developing youth with subgroups of primary and secondary callous‐unemotional youth. Sex differences were also explored. The groups were then compared on maltreatment histories (abuse and neglect) and experiences of parenting.

Although major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with suicidal behaviors, some depressed individuals are not suicidal and others evidence various forms of suicidality. We thus investigated whether aspects of temperament and self-regulation of dysphoria represent risk factors for DSM-IV suicidality (recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation, suicidal plan, and suicide attempt) in depressed youths. Using a sample of children with MDD (N=407; ages 7-14 years), recruited from clinical sites across Hungary, we tested the hypotheses that: (a) suicidality is related to higher levels of trait negative emotionality as well as more maladaptive and fewer adaptive regulatory responses to dysphoria and (b) as the severity of suicidal behavior increases, levels of trait negative emotionality and dysfunctional emotion regulation also increase. We also explored if other aspects of temperament relate to suicidality. Children's DSM-IV diagnoses were based on semi-structured interviews and best-estimate psychiatric consensus. Parents independently provided ratings of their children's temperament, and children separately completed an inventory of emotion regulation (ER). Using multivariate models, we failed to confirm the hypothesized relations of negative trait emotionality and suicidality, but confirmed that high maladaptive and low adaptive ER response tendencies increase the odds of suicidal behaviors, above and beyond the risk posed by depressive illness severity. Unplanned interaction terms between temperament dimensions (other than negative emotionality) and ER suggested that at some high-extremes of temperament, ER has no impact on suicidality but in their absence, adaptive ER lowers the risk of suicidality. The practical implications of the findings are discussed. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]