{"doi":"10.1111/jcpp.13794","title":"Network analysis of ecological momentary assessment identifies frustration as a central node in irritability","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Irritability presents transdiagnostically, commonly occurring with anxiety and other mood symptoms. However, little is known about the temporal and dynamic interplay among irritability-related clinical phenomena. Using a novel network analytic approach with smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA), we examined how irritability and other anxiety and mood symptoms were connected. METHODS: Sample included 152 youth ages 8-18 years (M ± SD = 12.28 ± 2.53; 69.74% male; 65.79% White) across several diagnostic groups enriched for irritability including disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (n = 34), oppositional defiant disorder (n = 9), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (n = 47), anxiety disorder (n = 29), and healthy comparisons (n = 33). Participants completed EMA on irritability-related constructs and other mood and anxiety symptoms three times a day for 7 days. EMA probed symptoms on two timescales: \"since the last prompt\" (between-prompt) versus \"at the time of the prompt\" (momentary). Irritability was also assessed using parent-, child- and clinician-reports (Affective Reactivity Index; ARI), following EMA. Multilevel vector autoregressive (mlVAR) models estimated a temporal, a contemporaneous within-subject and a between-subject network of symptoms, separately for between-prompt and momentary symptoms. RESULTS: For between-prompt symptoms, frustration emerged as the most central node in both within- and between-subject networks and predicted more mood changes at the next timepoint in the temporal network. For momentary symptoms, sadness and anger emerged as the most central node in the within- and between-subject network, respectively. While anger was positively related to sadness within individuals and measurement occasions, anger was more broadly positively related to sadness, mood lability, and worry between/across individuals. Finally, mean levels, not variability, of EMA-indexed irritability were strongly related to ARI scores. CONCLUSIONS: This study advances current understanding of symptom-level and temporal dynamics of irritability. Results suggest frustration as a potential clinically relevant treatment target. Future experimental work and clinical trials that systematically manipulate irritability-related features (e.g. frustration, unfairness) will elucidate the causal relations among clinical variables.","journal":"Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry","year":2023,"id":328253,"datarank":0.6288933488032695,"base_score":3.1780538303479458,"endowment":3.1780538303479458,"self_citation_contribution":0.47670807455219194,"citation_network_contribution":0.15218527425107758,"self_endowment_contribution":0.47670807455219194,"citer_contribution":0.15218527425107758,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":23,"citer_count":12,"citers_with_citation_signal":6,"citers_with_endowment":6,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.963,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"ClinicalTrials.gov":["NCT00018057","NCT00025935"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":713164,"name":"Reut Naim","orcid":"0000-0002-0424-5094","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":813358,"name":"Amanda Chue","orcid":"0000-0003-3405-1319","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":906793,"name":"Shannon Shaughnessy","orcid":"0000-0002-9128-9705","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1050209,"name":"Jennifer Meigs","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":72962,"name":"Daniel S. Pine","orcid":"0000-0002-4301-9516","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":37376,"name":"Ellen Leibenluft","orcid":"0000-0001-8971-2087","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":397270,"name":"Katharina Kircanski","orcid":"0000-0002-6546-5584","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":351828,"name":"Melissa A. Brotman","orcid":"0000-0002-9859-4702","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327129,"name":"Wan‐Ling Tseng","orcid":"0000-0001-8441-7118","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:08:52.196069Z","pmid":"36977629","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}