Los Reyes Andres De, Makol Bridget A, Racz Sarah J, Youngstrom Eric A, Lerner Matthew D, Keeley Lauren M
Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Program, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.
J Child Fam Stud. 2019 Jan;28(1):1-16. doi: 10.1007/s10826-018-1238-6. Epub 2018 Sep 12.
A key component of delivering mental health services involves evaluating psychosocial impairments linked to mental health concerns. Youth may experience these impairments in various ways (e.g., dysfunctional family and/or peer relationships, poor school performance). Importantly, youth may display symptoms of mental illness without co-occurring psychosocial impairments, and the reverse may be true. However, all available instruments for assessing youth psychosocial impairments presume the presence of mental health concerns among those assessed. Consequently, key gaps exist in knowledge about the developmental psychopathology of psychosocial impairments; and thus how to understand impairments in the context of youth mental health. To address these issues we developed a modified version of a 5-item measure of adult psychosocial impairments (i.e., Work and Social Adjustment Scale for Youth [WSASY]) and tested its psychometric properties. A mixed clinical/community sample of adolescents and parents completed parallel versions of the WSASY, along with a multi-domain, multi-method battery of measures of adolescent internalizing and externalizing concerns, parent psychosocial functioning, adolescent-parent conflict, adolescent peer functioning, and observed social skills. On both versions of the WSASY, increased scores related to increased adolescent mental health concerns, adolescent-parent conflict, parent psychosocial dysfunction, and peer-related impairments. WSASY scores also distinguished adolescents who displayed co-occurring mental health concerns from those who did not, and related to observed social skills deficits within social interactions with unfamiliar peers. The WSASY opens doors to new areas of inquiry regarding the developmental psychopathology of impairment, including questions regarding the onset of impairments and their links to mental health.
提供心理健康服务的一个关键组成部分是评估与心理健康问题相关的社会心理障碍。青少年可能以各种方式经历这些障碍（例如，家庭和/或同伴关系失调、学业成绩不佳）。重要的是，青少年可能表现出精神疾病症状但没有同时出现社会心理障碍，反之亦然。然而，所有用于评估青少年社会心理障碍的现有工具都假定被评估者存在心理健康问题。因此，在社会心理障碍的发展性精神病理学方面存在关键的知识空白；进而在青少年心理健康背景下如何理解这些障碍也存在空白。为了解决这些问题，我们开发了一个修改版的成人社会心理障碍5项量表（即青少年工作与社会适应量表[WSASY]）并测试了其心理测量特性。一个由青少年及其父母组成的混合临床/社区样本完成了WSASY的平行版本，以及一系列多领域、多方法的测量工具，这些工具用于测量青少年的内化和外化问题、父母的社会心理功能、青少年与父母的冲突、青少年的同伴功能以及观察到的社交技能。在WSASY的两个版本中，得分增加与青少年心理健康问题增加、青少年与父母的冲突增加、父母社会心理功能失调以及同伴相关障碍有关。WSASY得分还区分了同时存在心理健康问题的青少年和没有此类问题的青少年，并且与在与不熟悉的同伴的社交互动中观察到的社交技能缺陷有关。WSASY为关于障碍发展性精神病理学的新研究领域打开了大门，包括关于障碍的发作及其与心理健康的联系等问题。
