The Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ) is a parent-completed measure designed to identify subtle motor problems in children of 8 to 14.6 years of age. The purpose of this study was to extend the lower age range to children aged 5 to 7 years, revise items to ensure clarity, develop new scoring, and evaluate validity of the revised questionnaire. Additional items with improved wording were generated by an expert panel. Analyses of internal consistency, factor loading, and qualitative/quantitative feedback from researchers, clinicians, and parents were used to select 15 items with the strongest psychometric properties. Internal consistency was high (alpha = .94). The expanded questionnaire was completed by the parents of 287 children, aged 5-15 years, who were typically developing. Logistic regression modeling was used to generate separate cutoff scores for three age groups (overall sensitivity = 85%, specificity = 71%). The revised DCDQ was then compared to other standardized measures in a sample of 232 children referred for therapy services. Differences in scores between children with and without DCD (p < .001) provide evidence of construct validity. Correlations between DCDQ scores and Movement Assessment Battery for Children (r = .55) and Test of Visual-Motor Integration (r = .42) scores support concurrent validity. The results provide evidence that the revised DCDQ is a valid clinical screening tool for DCD.

BackgroundSevere mental illness (SMI), including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression, is responsible for a substantial proportion of disability in the population. This article describes the aims and design of a research study that takes a novel approach to targeted prevention of SMI. It is based on the rationale that early developmental antecedents to SMI are likely to be more malleable than fully developed mood or psychotic disorders and that low-risk interventions targeting antecedents may reduce the risk of SMI.Methods/DesignFamilies Overcoming Risks and Building Opportunities for Well-being (FORBOW) is an accelerated cohort study that includes a large proportion of offspring of parents with SMI and embeds intervention trials in a cohort multiple randomized controlled trial (cmRCT) design. Antecedents are conditions of the individual that are distressing but not severely impairing, predict SMI with moderate-to-large effect sizes and precede the onset of SMI by at least several years. FORBOW focuses on the following antecedents: affective lability, anxiety, psychotic-like experiences, basic symptoms, sleep problems, somatic symptoms, cannabis use and cognitive delay. Enrolment of offspring over a broad age range (0 to 21 years) will allow researchers to draw conclusions on a longer developmental period from a study of shorter duration. Annual assessments cover a full range of psychopathology, cognitive abilities, eligibility criteria for interventions and outcomes. Pre-emptive early interventions (PEI) will include skill training for parents of younger children and courses in emotional well-being skills based on cognitive behavioural therapy for older children and youth. A sample enriched for familial risk of SMI will enhance statistical power for testing the efficacy of PEI.DiscussionFORBOW offers a platform for efficient and unbiased testing of interventions selected according to best available evidence. Since few differences exist between familial and ’sporadic’ SMI, the same interventions are likely to be effective in the general population. Comparison of short-term efficacy of PEI on antecedents and the long term efficacy for preventing the onset of SMI will provide an experimental test of the etiological role of antecedents in the development of SMI.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-014-0344-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Children of parents with major mood and psychotic disorders are at increased risk of psychopathology, including psychotic symptoms. It has been suggested that the risk of psychosis may be more often transmitted from parent to opposite-sex offspring (e.g., from father to daughter) than to same-sex offspring (e.g., from father to son). To test whether sex-specific transmission extends to early manifestations of psychosis, we examined sex-specific contributions to psychotic symptoms among offspring of mothers and fathers with depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. We assessed psychotic symptoms in 309 offspring (160 daughters and 149 sons) aged 8-24 years (mean=13.1, s.d.=4.3), of whom 113 had a mother with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression and 43 had a father with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression. In semi-structured interviews, 130 (42%) offspring had definite psychotic symptoms established and confirmed by psychiatrists on one or more assessments. We tested the effects of mental illness in parents on same-sex and opposite-sex offspring psychotic symptoms in mixed-effect logistic regression models. Psychotic symptoms were more prevalent among daughters of affected fathers and sons of affected mothers than among offspring of the same sex as their affected parent. Mental illness in the opposite-sex parent increased the odds of psychotic symptoms (odds ratio (OR)=2.65, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.43-4.91, P=0.002), but mental illness in the same-sex parent did not have a significant effect on psychotic symptoms in offspring (OR=1.13, 95% CI 0.61-2.07, P=0.697). The opposite-sex-specific parent-of-origin effects may suggest X chromosome-linked genetic transmission or inherited chromosomal modifications in the etiology of psychotic symptoms.