Psychosocial Screening in Pediatric Populations

Psychosocial screening in children and adolescents constitutes a systematic approach to identify emotional, behavioural and social difficulties that may predispose young people to adverse outcomes. This process typically involves brief, standardised questionnaires or structured interviews administered in primary care, school, or community settings. The principal aims are early detection of internalising problems such as anxiety and depression, externalising problems such as conduct disorder and hyperactivity, and impairments in peer or family relationships. Effective screening programmes can facilitate timely referral to psychological or psychiatric services, enable monitoring of symptom trajectories and support the evaluation of interventions. Globally, the integration of screening into routine paediatric practice has been advocated to reduce unmet need and to promote equitable access to mental health support. Challenges include ensuring cultural and linguistic appropriateness of tools, maintaining high levels of sensitivity and specificity, addressing potential stigma, and embedding follow-up pathways for positive screens. Recent years have seen growing interest in utilising electronic health records and machine-learning algorithms to enhance predictive accuracy, alongside efforts to shorten and adapt instruments for diverse populations and remote delivery.

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Psychosocial Screening in Pediatric Populations publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in psychosocial screening in pediatric populations across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Psychosocial screening: A structured process using standardised tools to detect emotional, behavioural and social difficulties in children and adolescents.

Internalising problems: Psychological difficulties directed inward, including anxiety, depression and somatic complaints.

Externalising problems: Disruptive behaviours directed outward, such as aggression, rule-breaking and hyperactivity.

Sensitivity: The ability of a screening tool to correctly identify individuals who have a condition (true positive rate).

Specificity: The ability of a screening tool to correctly identify individuals who do not have a condition (true negative rate).

References

1. Short Form of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-Youth Self-Report (PSC-17-Y): Spanish Validation Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research (2021).
2. The development and evaluation of the paediatric index of emotional distress (PI-ED). Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology (2015).
3. Quantitative and temporal approach to utilising electronic medical records from general practices in mental health prediction. Computers in Biology and Medicine (2020).