Psychiatry (Child and Adolescent) - CHEO Research Institute

Mental Health Research at CHEO integrates the three pillars of our mission of high quality clinical care, ground-breaking research, and the education of the next generation of clinical scholars. A number of active research groups exist in psychiatric emergency services, eating disorders, ADHD, pediatric-mental health interface, and knowledge mobilization and outcomes management. Among the research scholars are local, provincial, national, and international leaders of research in child and youth mental health. All of the research enterprises are fully embedded in clinical practice creating the opportunity for the mental health community to be the type of learning environment expected in one of Canada’s leading pediatric teaching hospitals.

Research Projects

Pediatric emergency department physicians’ perceptions of virtual mental health assessments for urgent needs
07/02/2023

While many physicians agreed that there is a potential benefit of the ED virtual care platform for urgent mental health assessments, time constraints and lack of confidence in providing satisfactory virtual mental health care with minimal mental health support limited its acceptability. These findings can inform the future implementation of mental health services using an innovative virtual ED platform.
Building Resilience and Attachment in Vulnerable Adolescents: A Pilot Trial of a Brief Group Intervention for Adolescents with Mild to Moderate Suicidal Ideation and their Caregivers
11/11/2022

Study results demonstrate that the BRAVA intervention has the potential to reduce SI among adolescents who present to hospital services in crisis. Further studies are required to establish BRAVA's efficacy in a randomized controlled trial.
Circadian cortisol secretion in adolescent girls with conduct disorder
07/11/2022

This study advanced our knowledge about girls with severe antisocial behavior, discovering that lower circadian cortisol secretion is present in girls with CD, but largely due to decreased volume of cortisol secretion between awakening and 30-minutes post-awakening time. Comorbid internalizing disorders were not associated with differences in circadian secretion of cortisol, compared to girls with only CD.
Peripheral and neural correlates of self-harm in children and adolescents: a scoping review
04/05/2022

Our scoping review demonstrates that this corpus of research is not sufficiently mature for a meta-analysis to identify potential biomarkers. Many conflicting results are reported for the 28 specific correlates. Interpretation of the divergent results is hampered by methods that may have produced biased findings and samples mainly generalizable to clinical populations and girls. Most of the work was done in adolescents, not children younger than 11 years.
Emotional Modulation of Response Inhibition in Adolescents During Acute Suicidal Crisis: Event-Related Potentials in an Emotional Go/NoGo Task
13/12/2021

These findings provide more insight into inhibition difficulties in adolescents with acute suicidal risk. Interactions between emotional and inhibition processing should be considered when treating acutely suicidal youths.
Building Resilience and Attachment in Vulnerable Adolescents (BRAVA): a brief group intervention for adolescents with mild-to-moderate suicidal ideation and their caregivers
08/09/2021

Further studies are required to establish BRAVA’s efficacy in a randomized controlled trial.
Longitudinal association between movement behaviours and depressive symptoms among adolescents using compositional data analysis.
02/09/2021

Isotemporal substitution estimates indicated that decreasing screen time by 60 minutes/day and replacing that time with 60 minutes of additional sleep is associated with the largest change in depressive symptoms across all subgroups.
Implementation and evaluation of a curriculum on the assessment and treatment of disruptive behaviour disorders
03/04/2021

Pre–post-evaluation of the curriculum showed improved knowledge in participants.
Psychological Correlates of Sedentary Screen Time Behaviour Among Children and Adolescents: a Narrative Review
09/12/2020

Practitioners, parents, policy makers and researchers should collectively identify and evaluate strategies to reduce screen time, or to use screens more adaptively, as a means of promoting better mental health among children and adolescents.
What’s the harm in asking? A systematic review and meta-analysis on the risks of asking about suicide-related behaviors and self-harm with quality appraisal
25/07/2020

Unfortunately, misperceptions of harm remain which can compromise clinical care, research, and public health surveillance efforts. Our objective was to evaluate the empirical evidence on whether and how asking about suicide related behaviors (SRB), such as suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) results in harmful outcomes.
Medications for sleep disturbance in children and adolescents with depression: a survey of Canadian child and adolescent psychiatrists
01/03/2020

Melatonin and certain off-label psychotropic drugs are perceived as being more effective and appropriate to address sleep disturbances in children and adolescents with depression.
Could long-term administration of melatonin to prepubertal children affect timing of puberty? A clinician’s perspective
31/01/2019

We conclude that to investigate an association between melatonin and pubertal timing, it will be important to conduct long-term randomized controlled trials of latency age children and also examine the cellular and systems-level interactions between melatonin and kisspeptin, a recently identified neuropeptide with a locus of action at the gonadotropin releasing hormone neurons that is important in contributing to the timing of puberty onset.