Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchNormative Irritability in Youth: Developmental Findings From the Great Smoky Mountains Study
Section snippets
Participants
The Great Smoky Mountains Study is a longitudinal, representative study of children in 11 predominantly rural counties of North Carolina.25 Three cohorts of children, ages 9, 11, and 13 years, were recruited from a pool of some 12,000 children using a 2-stage sampling design, resulting in at total of 1,420 participants (49% female).25 American Indians were oversampled to constitute 25% of the sample, and African Americans comprised 7%. Annual assessments were completed in the 1,420 children
Prevalence of Irritability
At any given point in childhood/adolescence, 51.4% (standard error [SE] = 1.4) of participants reported phasic irritability, 28.3% (SE = 1.2) reported tonic irritability, 56.9% (SE = 1.3) reported either, and 22.8% (SE = 1.1) reported both. Figures 1A to 1D show the 3-month rates of any phasic irritability, tonic irritability, either or both, by age and sex. Rates of both types of irritability decreased significantly from middle childhood to adolescence but did not differ by sex. There was no
Discussion
Despite its ubiquity, little is known about how irritability and its components manifest in the community. Irritability is symptom of oppositional defiant disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depressive episodes, manic episodes, and associated features of many other disorders. This prospective, longitudinal study found that irritability is relatively common, decreases with age but does not vary by sex, and at
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An interview with the author is available by podcast at www.jaacap.org or by scanning the QR code to the right.
The work presented here was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (MH63970, MH63671, MH48085, MH094605), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA/MH11301), NARSAD (Early Career Award to W.E.C.), and the William T. Grant Foundation.
Disclosure: Dr. Copeland has received research support from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression. Dr. Brotman has received research support from the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Costello has received research support from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She was co-recipient of the 2009 National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression Ruane Prize for Outstanding Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research. She is co-author of the following assessment tools: Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA), Young Adult Psychiatric Assessment (YAPA), Child and Adolescent Impact Assessment (CAIA), Child and Adolescent Services Assessment (CASA), and Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ). No personal income is derived from any of these measures.