UCLA

Adolescence is a period of rapid neurological, social, and developmental change which increases vulnerability to psychopathology onset (Bitsko et al., 2018; Ghandour et al., 2019). Dimensions of child psychopathology incur substantial public health, educational, and economic costs spanning high rates of suicide, increased risk for juvenile justice involvement, and physical health problems (Birmaher & Brent, 2007). To accelerate new knowledge for evidence-based assessment, there is an urgent need to identify modifiable childhood risk factors for adolescent socio-emotional development.

Characterized by excessive reactivity to negative emotional stimuli, childhood irritability is common and developmentally normative (e.g., preschool) (Copeland et al., 2015). Despite its transdiagnostic relevance, the knowledgebase of childhood irritability is underdeveloped, particularly surrounding multi-informant ratings of irritability as well as risk factors for irritability. Study I leveraged data from a well-characterized sample of children with (n = 120) and without (n = 110) ADHD followed prospectively from childhood through early adolescence to evaluate parent and teacher combinations of childhood irritability in their prediction of psychopathology and functional impairment. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analyses assessed the association of informant combinations of childhood irritability with key outcomes to inform clinical decision making. Findings suggested that parent-rated and parent “or” teacher rated irritability significantly predicted CBCL Internalizing and Externalizing problems and functional impairments. ROC revealed that parent only ratings of irritability were significantly more accurate than parent “or” teacher report. Study II utilized the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a nationally representative sample followed prospectively across three years starting in childhood (ages 9-10) through early adolescence (age 12-13). We employed latent profile analysis to empirically identify risk profiles based dimensions of temperament (i.e., effortful control, surgency, and negative affect) and aspects of the family environment (i.e., family expression, cohesion, and conflict) and their association with childhood irritability. Findings suggested that a 3-profile model with an unrestricted/varying variance/covariance matrix was an appropriate fit for the data. Collectively, these findings accelerate the evidence-base assessment of childhood irritability, informing future research designs that can continue building an evidence base for the assessment of childhood irritability and its multivariate risk profiles.