ReviewChild and adolescent psychiatry and mental health2017
Overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents (in developed countries).
Review in Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04766580 (Placebo Effect in Children With Attention Deficit Disorder and/or Hyperactivity Disorder), which is not on this map. Cited by 45 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Placebo Effect in Children With Attention Deficit Disorder and/or Hyperactivity Disorder
Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 147 citations in OpenAlex.
- Individual child factors affecting the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents: a systematic review.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- A Blended Learning Course on the Diagnostics of Mental Disorders: Multicenter Cluster Randomized Noninferiority Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Trial
- Less is more? A hybrid machine learning and psychometric approach to identifying clinically relevant psychopathology in Chinese youth using the Child Behaviour Checklist.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2026Article
- History of Minor Consent Laws for Mental Health Treatment in the US.JAMA health forum · 2026Article
- Exploring Diagnostic Classification Prevalence in German and Dutch Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: An International Cross-Sectional Comparative Study.Transcultural psychiatry · 2026Article
- Blood-Based Metabolomic Biomarkers and Personality Traits in Major Depressive Disorder: Toward an Integrated Framework for Precision Psychiatry.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Beyond one-cutoff-fits-all: determining cutoff values for the PTSD checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5).European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- The Effect of Different Algorithms on Prevalence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder in Secondary Healthcare Data in Five European Countries: A Contribution from the ConcePTION Project.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- A Scoping Review of Trauma Treatments among Legally Involved Adolescents with Learning, Cognitive, or Intellectual Disabilities: Identifying clinically relevant research gaps in the literature.Journal of child & adolescent trauma · 2025Article
- A new framework for mental illnesses diagnosis using wearable devices aided by improved convolutional neural network.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Pathways to autism diagnosis in adulthood.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2025Article
- The role of breastfeeding, antibiotics and antimalarial medicinal exposure in paediatric depression amongst children aged under 5: a population-based study.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
- Factors Associated with Confirmed and Unconfirmed Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis in Children Volunteering for Research.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- From theDepression and anxiety · 2025Article
- Temporal trends and social inequities in adolescent and young adult mental health disorders in Catalonia, Spain: a 2008-2022 primary care cohort study.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2024Article
- Evaluating agreement between medical record diagnoses and independent evaluator diagnoses in a community-based effectiveness study.Evidence-based practice in child and adolescent mental health · 2024Article
- Diagnostic error in mental health: a review.BMJ quality & safety · 2024Review
- Content agreement of depressive symptomatology in children and adolescents: a review of eighteen self-report questionnaires.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2024Review
- The role of internet addiction and academic resilience in predicting the mental health of high school students in Tehran.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- A Longitudinal Analysis of Concerning Psychotropic Medication Regimens Among Adolescents in Foster Care.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
During the past 50 years, health insurance providers and national registers of mental health regularly report significant increases in the number of mental disorder diagnoses in children and adolescents. However, epidemiological studies show mixed effects of time trends of prevalence of mental disorders. Overdiagnosis in clinical practice rather than an actual increase is assumed to be the cause for this situation. We conducted a systematic literature search on the topic of overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents. Most reviewed studies suggest that misdiagnosis does occur; however, only one study was able to examine overdiagnosis in child and adolescent mental disorders from a methodological point-of-view. This study found significant evidence of overdiagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. In the second part of this paper, we summarize findings concerning diagnostician, informant and child/adolescent characteristics, as well as factors concerning diagnostic criteria and the health care system that can lead to mistakes in the routine diagnostic process resulting in misdiagnoses. These include the use of heuristics instead of data-based decisions by diagnosticians, misleading information by caregivers, ambiguity in symptom description relating to classification systems, as well as constraints in most health systems to assign a diagnosis in order to approve and reimburse treatment. To avoid misdiagnosis, standardized procedures as well as continued education of diagnosticians working with children and adolescents suffering from a mental disorder are needed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.