Autistic (pre-) adolescents are often misunderstood by their peers, which can lead to challenges within their friendships. Yet, friendships play an important role in our psychological wellbeing, whereby in the non-autistic population good quality friendships usually protect against mental health difficulties, whereas conflictual friendships…

Concern about the negative impact of the digital world on young people has increased in recent years (see, e.g., Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], 2021; United Nations, 2021). A growing body of research explores aspects of young people's online lives and mental wellbeing (see, e.g., Kandola et al., 2021, Kelly et al., 2018,…

The aim of this study is to explore how students' reports of proactive aggressiveness and mental health problems are associated with their perception of classroom interaction when controlling for socioeconomic status, gender and grade level. Classroom interaction is understood in terms of teachers' emotional support, monitoring and instructional…

Background: The ability to understand and manage emotional experience is critical to children's health. This study confirmed the validity of the How I Feel (HIF) Questionnaire, a measure of children's emotional arousal and regulation, exploring its associations with measures of emotional and social functioning. Methods: The sample was comprised of…

This paper reports two studies that investigated children's conceptions of mental illness using a naive theory approach, drawing upon a conceptual framework for analysing illness representations which distinguishes between the identity, causes, consequences, curability, and timeline of an illness. The studies utilized semi-structured interviewing…

Background: Suicide is a leading cause of death among youths. Comparatively few studies have studied recent trends over time, or examined rates and characteristics of service contact in well-defined national samples. Methods: Data on general population suicides and mid-year population estimates were used to calculate suicide rates (per…

The main aim of this article is to explore the association between mental health problems in children placed out-of-home and family risk factors reported as reasons for placement. The sample consisted of 109 Norwegian children aged 6-12 years. Mental health problems were assessed by the Revised Rutter scales reported by the parents and the…