Adolescent Health in the Post-Pandemic Era: Evolving Stressors, Interventions, and Prevention Strategies amid Rising Depression and Suicidality.

Prior to COVID-19, there were already increasing rates of youth with mental health concerns, including an increase in youth presenting to medical emergency departments (EDs) with mental health chief complaints and limited access to treatment. This trend worsened during the pandemic, and rates of youth presenting to medical EDs with suicidal ideation and self-harm increased 50% from 2019 to 2022. This resulted in a "boarding" crisis, in part, due to a lack of inpatient psychiatric hospitalization beds, and many youth were left without access to adequate treatment. Additional study of innovations in health care delivery will be paramount in meeting this need.

The Role of School-based Interventions and Communities for Mental Health Prevention, Tiered Levels of Care, and Access to Care.

This article highlights the key role of schools in addressing rising mental health disorders among youth. It champions collaboration between health and educational sectors, emphasizing child and adolescent psychiatrists' significant contribution to school-based mental health literacy and interventions. This article encourages for child and adolescent psychiatrists' involvement in policy advocacy for accessible and inclusive mental health care, championing sustainable mental health services through advocating for funding, training, and policy support.

Identifying the Most Important Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Publications in 2020 Using a Novel Literature Assessment Instrument.

BACKGROUND: As the science of consultation-liaison psychiatry advances, the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry's Guidelines and Evidence-Based Medicine Subcommittee reviews articles of interest to help academy members remain familiar with the latest in evidence-based practice. OBJECTIVE: We identify the 10 most important articles for clinical practice in consultation-liaison psychiatry from 2020 using the new Importance and Quality instrument for assessing scientific literature. METHODS: The subcommittee published annotated abstracts for 97 articles on the academy website in 2020. Reviewers then rated all articles on clinical importance to practice and quality of scholarship using the Importance and Quality instrument. We describe the 10 articles with the highest aggregate scores and analyze the reliability of Importance and Quality instrument. RESULTS: Twenty-four raters identified the top 10 scoring articles of 2020. These articles provide practical guidance on key areas of consultation-liaison psychiatry including management of COVID-19, lithium treatment for complex patients, medical risks among patients with severe mental illness, and substance use disorders in medical settings. The assessment instrument demonstrated good to excellent interrater reliability. CONCLUSION: These articles offer valuable guidance for consultation-liaison psychiatrists regardless of their practice area. Collaborative literature reviews with standardized assessments help clinicians deliver evidence-based care and foster a high standard of practice across the specialty.

Clinician Accuracy in Identifying and Predicting Organ Dysfunction in Critically Ill Children.

OBJECTIVES: To determine clinician accuracy in the identification and prediction of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital PICU. PATIENTS: Patients admitted to the PICU with an anticipated PICU length of stay greater than 48 hours. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: For each patient, the clinical team (attending, fellow, resident/nurse practitioner) was surveyed regarding existing and anticipated organ dysfunction. The primary outcomes were clinicians' accuracy at identifying multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and predicting new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, compared to the objective assessment of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome using Proulx criteria. We also measured sensitivity, specificity, negative and positive predictive values, and negative and positive likelihood ratios of clinician assessments. We tested for differences in accuracy by clinician type using chi-square tests. Clinicians rated their confidence in prediction on a 5-point Likert scale. There were 476 eligible PICU admissions, for whom 1,218 surveys were completed. Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome was present in 89 patients (18.7%) at enrollment, and new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome occurred in 39 (8.2%). Clinicians correctly identified multiple organ dysfunction syndrome with 79.9% accuracy and predicted additional organ dysfunction with 82.6% accuracy. However, the positive and negative likelihood ratios for new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome prediction were 3.0 and 0.7, respectively, indicating a weak relationship between the clinician prediction and development of new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. The positive predictive value of new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome prediction was just 22.1%. We found no differences in accuracy by clinician type for either identification of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (80.2% vs 78.2% vs 81.0%; p = 0.57) or prediction of new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (84.8% vs 82.8% vs 80.3%; p = 0.26) for attendings, fellows, and residents/nurse practitioners, respectively. There was a weak correlation between the confidence and accuracy of prediction (pairwise correlation coefficient, 0.26; p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: PICU clinicians correctly identified multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and predicted new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome with 80% accuracy. However, only 8% of patients developed new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, so accuracy was largely due to true negative predictions. The positive predictive value for new or progressive multiple organ dysfunction syndrome prediction was just 22%. Accuracy did not differ by clinician type, but was correlated with self-rated confidence and was higher for negative predictions.