Investigators
Amy Finlay-Jones, Jetro Ang, Jayden Lucas, Juliet Brook, Vincent Mancini, Keerthi Kottampally, Catherine Elliott
Collaborators
Lauren Wakschlag, J. D. Smith, Leigha MacNeill, Sheila Krogh-Jespersen, Yi-Huey Lim
Partners
Northwestern University
Project description
Irritability is a common trait seen in children. While expressions of irritability are part of normal development, servere irritability is a known indicator of child and adolescent mental health problems. Irritability can be expressed in many different ways, and as such can be measured in various ways.
In this systematic review and meta-analysis, our study examined the literature to determine the strength of the association between irritability measured from 0-5 years and later mental health problems, identify mediators and moderators of these relationships, and to explore whether the strength of the association varied according to different conceptulisations of irritability.
Early irritability was found to be a robust predictor of developing mental health problems in childhood and adolescence, however more work is required to understand how to accurately characterise irritability across this developmental period, and to understand mechanisms underlying the relationship between early irritability and later mental health problems.