Associations between cognitive errors and mental health status in New Zealand adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Cognitive models of psychopathology suggest that negatively biased thinking styles are involved in the development and maintenance of emotional disturbances. AIMS: The present study examined the relationships between negative cognitive errors and indices of mental health status (i.e. anxiety and depression) in New Zealand adolescents. METHOD: A community sample of 490 youth aged 16-18 years completed an anonymous online survey consisting of the Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ), the Trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). RESULTS: Negative cognitive errors correlated positively with greater levels of anxious and depressive symptoms. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that overall cognitive error score was a strong predictor of adolescents' self-reported anxious symptoms and, to a lesser extent, depressive symptoms. Moreover, cognitive errors significantly differentiated between adolescents with high scores from adolescents with low scores on both the anxiety (STAI-T) and the depression (CES-D) scales. CONCLUSIONS: These findings lend support to the generalizability of Beck's cognitive theory to a New Zealand adolescent population and highlight the importance of focusing on prevention and early intervention programmes that directly target these faulty or biased ways of thinking in adolescents with anxious and/or depressive symptoms before meeting diagnostic criteria.

Clinical Profiles Among Greek Adolescent Suicide Attempters.

BACKGROUND: Suicide attempts are a significant public health problem among youth, resulting in a major social and economic burden for communities and a devastating impact on families. AIMS: To determine whether we can identify distinct clinical profiles using latent class analysis in a clinical sample of Greek adolescents who were admitted to hospital following a suicide attempt. METHOD: Data on 11 clinical parameters from 182 adolescents were analyzed, with a two-class solution selected as the best fitting among the one- through three-class solutions that were examined. RESULTS: We observed two distinct classes, specifically in the probability of mood disorders, substance use disorders, abandonment/neglect, and displaying traits of personality disorders. While most of the adolescents who attempted suicide showed a low probability of these parameters (71.7%), about a third of the sample (28.3%) showed a much more severe clinical profile. Analyses of pertinent contextual and risk factors indicated that those with a more severe clinical profile tend to come from overall more dysfunctional family systems, have more problems in school, and have made a previous attempt. CONCLUSION: We conclude that the adolescent suicide attempt population is a heterogeneous group in need of focused differentiated care specifically targeted to particular subgroups.