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‘Inclusion’ aims to achieve adaptation of the environment to the diverse prerequisites and needs of individuals, instead of demanding of individuals to cope with the challenges of a given context themselves exclusively. All Scandinavian countries have made formal decisions to enhance inclusive practice for children and adolescents with disabilities in educational settings, seeking to implement international conventions. We investigated current inclusive practice for students with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) in Swedish primary, secondary and high-schools using the 61-item INCLUSIO scale among N=4778 school staff with educational responsibilities in 68 public and private schools across 11 municipalities. Overall, school staff reported not to be well prepared to teach students with NDDs and that their school’s implementation of concrete inclusive practice was limited. Findings indicate a gap between inclusive educational ambitions and current practice for students with NDDs. Enriched teacher education and supervision for NDDs, a shift in pedagogical views of NDDs and better collaboration between community services, as well as systematic evidence-based implementation plans driven by policy makers and educational authorities may help improve inclusive practice.

The support needs of people with neurodevelopmental disorders are not sufficiently met during the initial years of adulthood. To evaluate feasibility and preliminary effects of a novel programme designed to empower young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to make progress within significant life domains (i.e. work, education, finance, housing/household management, health, leisure/participation in society, and relationships/social network). TRANSITION is a 24-week programme that combines group-based workshops with personalised support based on goal attainment scaling. The study enrolled 26 young adults (50% females; age 17–24 years) in the normative intellectual range, diagnosed with ASD (n = 8), ADHD (n = 4), or both (n = 14). The intervention was delivered by the regular staff of publicly funded psychiatric services in Stockholm, Sweden. The programme was possible to implement with minor deviations from the manual. Participants and staff generally viewed the intervention positively, but also provided feedback to guide further improvement. There was a high degree of attendance throughout, with 21 participants (81%) completing the programme. All completers exceeded their predefined goal expectations within at least one domain. The TRANSITION-programme is a promising concept that deserves further evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social skills group training (SSGT) is widely used for intellectually able children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous studies indicate small to moderate effects on social communication capacities. The duration of most available programs is relatively short, and extended training might lead to further improvement. This randomized controlled trial compared an extended 24-week version of the SSGT program KONTAKT with standard care. The weekly sessions gradually shifted in content from acquisition of new skills to real-world application of the acquired skills. A total of 50 participants with ASD (15 females; 35 males) aged 8-17 years were included. The study was conducted at two child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient units in Sweden. The primary outcome was the Social Responsiveness Scale-Second Edition (SRS-2) rated by parents and blinded teachers. Secondary outcomes included parent- and teacher-rated adaptive behaviors, trainer-rated global functioning and clinical severity, and self-reported child and caregiver stress. Assessments were made at baseline, posttreatment, and at 3-months follow-up. Parent-rated SRS-2 scores indicated large effects posttreatment [− 19.2; 95% CI − 29.9 to − 8.5; p < .001, effect size (ES) = 0.76], which were maintained at follow-up (− 20.7; 95% CI − 31.7 to − 9.7; p < .0001, ES = 0.82). These estimates indicate substantially larger improvement than previously reported for shorter SSGT. However, the effects on teacher-rated SRS-2 and most secondary outcomes did not reach statistical significance. Our results suggest added benefits of extended SSGT training, implying that service providers might reach better results by optimizing the delivery of SSGT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To assess the generalizability of findings from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating emotion recognition (ER) training for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: We present a systematic review and narrative synthesis of the determinants of external validity in RCTs on ER training. Generalizability of the findings across situations, populations, settings, treatment delivery, and intervention formats was considered. Results: We identified 13 eligible studies. Participants were predominantly boys with ASD in the normative IQ range (IQ > 70), with an age span from 4 to 18 years across studies. Interventions and outcome measures were highly variable. Several studies indicated that training may improve ER, but it is still largely unknown to what extent training effects are translated to daily social life. Conclusion: The generalizability of findings from currently available RCTs remains unclear. This underscores the importance of involving children with ASD and their caregivers in informed treatment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set is a newly developed collection of dynamic multimodal emotion and mental state representations. A total of 20 emotions and mental states are represented through facial expressions, vocal expressions, body gestures and contextual social scenes. This emotion set is portrayed by a multi-ethnic group of child and adult actors. Here we present the validation results, as well as participant ratings of the emotional valence, arousal and intensity of the visual stimuli from this emotion stimulus set. The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set is available for use by the scientific community and the validation data are provided as a supplement available for download. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a nationwide study of zinc-copper metabolic cycles in twins in Sweden. A predictive model to distinguish participants who would be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in childhood from those who did not develop the disorder was created using novel tooth-matrix biomarkers that provide direct measures of fetal elemental uptake. The study found three quantifiable characteristics of fetal and postnatal zinc-copper rhythmicity that are altered in ASD.

Purpose: The Conners Rating Scales are widely used in research and clinical practice for measuring attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and associated problem behaviors, but country-specific norms are seldom collected. The current study presents the standardization of the Swedish Conners 3 ® Rating Scales. In addition, we compared the Swedish norms to those collected in the U.S. and Germany., Material and Methods: The study included altogether 3496 ratings of children and adolescents aged 6-18 years from population-based samples., Results: The scores obtained for the Swedish Conners 3 ® showed satisfactory to excellent internal consistency for most subscales and excellent test-retest reliability. Across-informant correlations were modest. Cross-country comparisons revealed that aggression symptoms rated by teachers and ADHD symptoms rated by parents differed between Sweden, Germany and the U.S. Executive functioning deficits also varied as a function of rater and country, with German and Swedish teachers reporting increasing behavior problems with age, whereas a decrease was observed in the U.S. For some subscales, the observed cross-cultural differences were large enough for a child to be classified as being within the normal range (t-score <60) in one country and within the clinical range (t-score > 70) in another country., Conclusion: The present study shows that the Swedish adaptation of the Conners 3 ® provides consistent and reproducible scores. However, across-informant ratings were only modest and significant cross-cultural differences in scoring were observed. This emphasizes the need for multi-informant assessment as well as for national norms for rating instruments commonly used within child and adolescent psychiatry research and clinical settings.