The Association officially celebrated its 50th anniversary at the end of June. Launched by Professor Barbara Tizard, wife of the late Jack Tizard and Professor Sheila Hollins, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, during ACAMH's popular National Conference, the event attracted over 300 people. An evening celebration dinner, bringing together past honorary officers, closed the day. Photos of this memorable event will be published on ACAMH's website shortly and a commemorative booklet on the Association's development from 1956 to 2006 is available by telephoning 020 7403 7458 or email: acamh@acamh.org.uk.

The National Conference was also the setting for the Association's AGM and the election of the Trustees to the Board. We are delighted that Professor David Cottrell has accepted the position of Chair Elect, to become Chair at the AGM in 2007. David will be known to many of you - he is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Leeds University and Associate Medical Director for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the East Leeds Primary Care Trust. The Board also welcomed Ian Higgins, Nurse Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Honorary Lecturer at Kingston University.

The programme for 'Comprehensive CAMHS Provision: Services for Children and Young People with Learning Disabilities',

The head office of ACAMH offers facilities to both members and non-members to host conferences and meetings for up to a maximum of

The Association is delighted to announce that the impact factor for its publication, Journal for Child Psychology and Psychiatry

The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain
James Blair, Derek Mitchell, and Karina Blair

Psychopaths continue to be demonised by the media and estimates suggest that a disturbing percentage of the population has psychopathic tendencies. This timely and controversial new book summarizes what we already know about psychopathy and antisocial behaviour and puts forward a new case for its cause - with far-reaching implications.

ISBN: 0-631-23336-9 PB, RRP: £15.99

Exclusive ACAMH Member Offer Price: £11.99
To order, please log into the member's area of the ACAMH website and follow the instructions there. Offer available until 31/12/2006.

The papers in the August issue of JCPP provide a wonderful example of how to do great science in a clinically informative way and illustrate the power of longitudinal data to characterise developmental risk processes. The papers by Snowling et al and Drabick et al focus on the importance of specificity in risk-outcome pathways. Results in the former paper, looking at the heightened risk of psychiatric disorder in children with speech-language impairments, were both as expected (ie that severe impairment heightens the risk of psychiatric morbidity) but also show more specific relationships between different types of psychosocial outcomes and different types of language impairment. These findings highlight the need to target resources on children with severe and persistent impairment, especially where these are combined with the emergence of learning problems linked to literacy. Drabick and colleagues shift our focus to a different risk domain but explore the same sort of issue - examining the specific factors within the child's psychosocial environment that predispose children with a diagnosis of ADHD to develop depression and/or conduct disorder. The results of the study show the value of assessing and addressing contextual risk factors as well as child impairment when targeting clinical resources for treatment. Elsewhere, Jenkins and colleagues explore the web of risk factors associated with teenage motherhood, giving a special empahsis to the link between mother's anger during pregnancy and later child agression and conduct problems. It appears that partner conflict is the best predictor of the emergence of conduct problems (rather than maternal anger), suggesting that preventative interventions in this domain might be best focused on educating teenage mothers to understand the impact and consequences of inappropriate partner choice. Two further papers - by Barker et al and Campbell et al - test the assumption that pro-active (instrumental) and reactive (emotional) aggression have different trajectories and that trajectory membership predicts which children are likely to get involved in serious delinquent behaviour in adolescence. For a full list of articles included in this month's issue of JCPP, please click here

Practitioner reviews are intended to inform clinicians about emerging best ptactice, to highlight future developments and to summarise research findings, with their implications for the clinic. As a newly appointed Associate Editor of the JCPP with responsibility for Practitioner Reviews, Isobel Heyman is keen to hear from the journal's readership about topics for these Reviews:

The forthcoming issue of CAMH, due out in September, presents a good mix of articles from both UK and well as International contributors. It opens with two review articles - one by David Howe looking at the developmental attachment psychotherapy with fostered and adopted children and the second by Mike Rutter, looking at whether Sure Start is an effective preventive intervention. In the series of Original Articles, T Ogden and K A Hagen look at multisystemic treatment (MST) of serious behaviour problems in youth, comparing the effectiveness of MST with regular services two years after intake to treatment. A Wiener and H Rodwell evaluate a CAMH tier 2 service in a primary care service for general practice, examining the clinical activities of the primary mental health workers, the effect of the service on referrals to specialist CAMHS and the utilisation and perceived usefulness of the service. C O Toppelberg et al consider the Spanish-English bilingual children with psychopathology, particular reference being given to language deficits and academic language proficiency and their implications for clinical practice. The final original article included in this edition is a survey on the atypical antipsychotic medication use by child and adolescent psychiatrists. The authors, L Sivaprasad et al, conducted a postal survey of child psychiatrists in the United Kingdom to evaulate their use of atypical antipsychotics for psychotic and non-psychotic conditions, the results showing that atypical antipsychotics appear to play a significant role in current child psychiatry practice. The September CAMH concludes with an Innovations in Practice article looking at engaging adolescents through technology, in particular the use of e-mail and the advantages and disadvantages of this method.

London & South East Branch, Twilight Meeting