Understanding tonic and phasic irritability in developmental psychopathology among help-seeking children and adolescents in Switzerland: Protocol for the longitudinal multimodal UTOPICA study

Introduction Irritability represents one of the most common causes of referral to child and adolescent mental health services. Conceptually, tonic irritability (i.e., persistent grumpy mood) can be distinguished from phasic irritability (i.e., temper outbursts).

The objective of this research project is to develop a fine-grained, ecologically valid and multimodal characterisation of tonic and phasic irritability to better understand the differential role of the two components in developmental psychopathology. Methods and analysis The study has a longitudinal observational and experimental design and involves two sites: (a) the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University Hospital of Lausanne and (b) the Division of Youth Mental Health at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Basel.

220 help-seeking and healthy youths aged 8 - 14 years and their families will participate in the study consisting of a baseline assessment (i.e., self-report, interviews, cognitive assessments, autonomic measures, as well as in-situ experiments), an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) phase (over 2 weeks, including experience sampling method, cognitive assessment and passive monitoring) and a 1-year follow-up.