Understanding Chronic Aggression and Its Treatment in Children and Adolescents.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Youth aggression is common and has a significant burden on individuals, families, and society. However, its treatment is often a challenge for clinicians. Thus, this review will examine the current understanding of youth aggression, conceptualize aggression as a symptom rather than its own disorder, and provide an overview of treatment strategies. RECENT FINDINGS: Youth aggression is associated with complex genetic, neurobiological, and environmental risks. Prevention strategies are of the utmost importance for at-risk families and youth. Psychosocial interventions are the first line treatment. But if not fully effective, then pharmacologic interventions-including psychostimulants, alpha-2 agonists, atomoxetine, and risperidone-have shown benefits. Other medications, such as SSRIs, can be useful in certain scenarios. It is important to conceptualize youth aggression as being a trans-diagnostic symptom in psychopathology. Determining the underlying cause of aggression will help to guide treatment.

Serum fluoxetine and norfluoxetine levels support the safety of fluoxetine in overdose.

BACKGROUND: Previous literature has found fluoxetine to be relatively safe in overdose. This study hopes to examine this idea along with support from published pharmacokinetic information including serum fluoxetine and norfluoxetine levels based on information from a clinical case series. METHODS: Four cases are presented along with vital abnormalities, electrocardiogram abnormalities, and physical exam abnormalities along with amount of overdose and resulting serum fluoxetine and norfluoxetine levels. CASE PRESENTATION: In these four cases, serum fluoxetine and norfluoxetine days after overdose were found to be in a range believed to be within the treatment range. No abnormalities were found on electrocardiogram but some patients (3) were found to have slight elevations in heart rate. CONCLUSION: Fluoxetine is relatively safe in overdose. This study supports previous literature. Future directives for research can be directed towards when serotonergic, including fluoxetine, medications can be introduced or restarted in patients who have overdosed. Research could also focus on if the introduction of another medication, such as carbamazepine, to induce metabolism of a medication, such as fluoxetine, after an overdose.

Efficacy of Long-Acting Injectable Antipsychotics in Adolescents.

INTRODUCTION: The number of long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIA) has increased in recent years. The safety and efficacy of that treatment are not established in children. This study aims to address this gap of information by studying such treatments in a case series. METHODS: This retrospective chart review of patients identified by the investigators at an academic acute inpatient psychiatric unit included all patients from the past 24 months who required new initial treatment with LAIA. This study included a case series of the nine patients along with Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) scores from admission and discharge and Clinical Global Impression-Improvement (CGI-I) scores. Other observations included the presentation of primary psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric and medical comorbidities, age, sex, previous and LAIA psychiatric medications, reasoning for LAIA treatment, adverse events, CGI-S and CGI-I scores, and outpatient resources utilized to continue treatment. RESULTS: The case series included two females and seven males within the ages of 14-17 years. Of those patients, five were treated with paliperidone palmitate, one treated with risperidone, one treated with fluphenazine, and one treated with aripiprazole. Primary psychiatric diagnosis of the patients in the case series included five with schizophrenia, one with schizoaffective disorder, one with bipolar affective disorder-type I, one with bipolar affective disorder-not otherwise specified, and one with mood disorder-not otherwise specified. In all nine cases, noncompliance was a consideration in treatment with LAIA. Frequent running away and severity of illness were also considerations in one case each. All of the patients required community resources with injectable services. CONCLUSION: This study describes initiation of treatment with LAIA in 14-17-year olds in an acute inpatient psychiatric unit with serious mental illness. This study also demonstrates the need for outpatient community resources with the ability to provide long-acting injectable medication. Limitations of this study include a small patient population, other factors changing CGI-S and CGI-I scores beyond the medication, and the nature of the study as a retrospective chart review. This study did not compare medications between each other. Maintenance dosing and long-term safety were beyond the scope of this study. Future directives for safety studies, open-label trials, and randomized double-blinded control trails in the pediatric population would be needed.