Patterns of psychopathology and personal strengths among youth in psychiatric care.

Abstract

Background: The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry have declared a National State of Emergency in Children's Mental Health, calling for improved approaches to address youth mental health. We sought to leverage the first child psychiatry division-wide measurement-based care initiative to advance understanding of how both psychopathology and social-emotional skills are related among youth patients, as these associations are rarely examined together. In doing so, our objective was to provide an empirical basis for integrative approaches that target psychopathology, while also leveraging social-emotional strengths.

Methods: Youth patients receiving a continuum of psychiatric services, from intensive outpatient to short-term residential programs (N = 926; ages 11-24; 58% Cis-Female; 84.6% White), completed self-report measures of psychopathology and social-emotional skills. Latent profile analyses were conducted to identify distinct profiles within the sample.

Results: Seven profiles were identified. Profiles with overlapping syndromes were differentiated by highly distinct patterns of socio-emotional strengths and challenges.

Conclusion: Social-emotional skills assessment provides unique information beyond syndrome severity and can be used to create personalized subgroups of clinical patients. We observed many youth with similar syndromes report markedly different patterns of social-emotional skills. We emphasize the clinical utility of integrating strengths- and resilience-based frameworks into psychiatric assessment and treatment planning-supporting the shift beyond treatment models focused solely on reducing symptoms and skills deficits, toward more personalized approaches that also leverage youths' existing capacities for growth and recovery.