Office of Medical Student Education
Psychiatry Scholars Program
Student:
| Amanda Hutchinson |
Class: |
2010 |
Mentor:
| Dr. Carol Beresford |
Project Title:
| Evaluating Bipolar Disorder in Preschool-aged Children |
Student's Project Description
The proposed project is to assist Dr. Carol Beresford with a study that is currently being conducted (Comirb #03-740). This study is investigating several potential diagnostic tools for evaluating bipolar disorder in preschool-aged children (5 years old and younger). Dr. Beresford has already started evaluating the usefulness of some of these diagnostic tools that have been established for use in slightly different populations (for disorders other than bipolar disorder), or in different age groups (6 years and older). The Washington University Schedule for Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders (WASH-U-KSADS) (Geller et al. 1998) has been used to assess for bipolar disorder in children ages 6-12. Additionally the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA) (Egger, Ascher & Angold, 1999) has been used to assess for some psychiatric disorders in preschoolers, but has not yet explored bipolar disorder.
Both the WASH-U-KSADS and the PAPA both rely on parent interview to assess the child’s symptoms. So, Dr. Beresford added another measure, the MacArthur Story Stem Narratives (MSSB) to attempt to explore the child’s symptoms through role playing. The MSSB is what I would be in charge of running with the study population. The narratives start with the experimenter setting up a “story stem” that leads to some sort of conflict that the child then has to resolve through role-playing. The MSSB has proved to be a structured way to interview the child without parent report.
Dr. Beresford collected some compelling preliminary evidence that the MSSB is an effective method of revealing the worlds of the children in the preschool mood disorders study. Due to the preliminary findings with the other measures, Dr. Beresford changed the protocol a bit to include all of the diagnostic categories of the PAPA, while eliminating the WASH-U-KSADS. The study will now include three different groups of children defined using the PAPA: mood disorder (with or without comorbid ADHD), ADHD, and typical children. The children diagnosed with ADHD are being added using the same protocol to investigate the specificity of the findings and the ability of the tools to precisely diagnose bipolar disorder in preschoolers.
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