ArticleJournal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry2022
Understanding Irritability in Relation to Anger, Aggression, and Informant in a Pediatric Clinical Population.
Article in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Understanding irritability through the lens of self-regulatory control processes in children and adolescents: a systematic review.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Mapping phenotypic and genetic relationships among irritability, depression and ADHD in adolescence using network analysis.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- Measuring irritability across childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood: an investigation of measurement invariance by age, sex, and informant.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2026Article
- Evaluating psychometric validity of ecological momentary assessment for youth irritability.Journal of affective disorders · 2025Article
- Review: Evidence-Based Psychosocial Treatments for Childhood Irritability and Aggressive Behavior.JAACAP open · 2025Review
- Drug Holidays May Attenuate Beneficial Effects of Treatment on Emotion Regulation and Recognition Among Children with ADHD: A Single-Center, Prospective Study.Psychiatry and clinical psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Peer functioning difficulties may exacerbate symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and irritability over time: a temporal network analysis.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2024Article
- Irritability in Youths: A Critical Integrative Review.The American journal of psychiatry · 2024Review
- Changes in Internalizing Symptoms During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Transdiagnostic Sample of Youth: Exploring Mediators and Predictors.Child psychiatry and human development · 2024Article
- Physical Aggression Toward Others and Self: Correlates in Autism, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and Population-Based Child Samples.JAACAP open · 2023Article
- A pragmatic, clinically optimized approach to characterizing adolescent irritability: Validation of parent- and adolescent reports on the Multidimensional Assessment Profile Scales-Temper Loss Scale.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2023Article
- Associations between sleep quality and irritability: Testing the mediating role of emotion regulation.Personality and individual differences · 2023Article
- Network analysis of ecological momentary assessment identifies frustration as a central node in irritability.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2023Article
- Robust caregiver-youth discrepancies in irritability ratings on the affective reactivity index: An investigation of its origins.Journal of affective disorders · 2023Article
- Editorial: The Boundaries of Irritability and Implications for Measurement.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveDespite its clinical relevance to pediatric mental health, the relationship of irritability with anger and aggression remains unclear. We aimed to quantify the relationships between well-validated, commonly used measurements of these constructs and informant effects in a clinically relevant population.
methodA total of 195 children with primary diagnoses of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, or no major disorder and their parents rate irritability, anger, and aggression on measures of each construct. Construct and informant relationships were mapped via multi-trait, multi-method factor analysis.
resultsParent- and child-reported irritability and child-reported anger are highly associated (r = 0.89) but have some significant differences. Irritability overlaps with outward expression of anger but diverges from anger in anger suppression and control. Aggression has weaker associations with both irritability (r = 0.56) and anger (r = 0.49). Across measures, informant source explains a substantial portion of response variance.
conclusionIrritability, albeit distinct from aggression, is highly associated with anger, with notable overlap in child-reported outward expression of anger, providing empirical support for formulations of clinical irritability as a proneness to express anger outwardly. Diagnostic and clinical intervention work on this facet of anger can likely translate to irritability. Further research on external validation of divergence of these constructs in anger suppression and control may guide future scale revisions. The proportion of response variance attributable to informant may be an under-recognized confound in clinical research and construct measurement.
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