IntroductionPersonality plays a crucial role in a person's behavior, emotions and cognitive patterns and shows an important relationship with several variables such as marital status, mental disorders or parenting models. However, little is known about the relation between the parental Big Five personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness) and children psychopathology regardless of the diagnostic of their offspring.ObjectivesTo analyze the correlation between parents’ Big Five personality traits and their children categorical diagnosis and psychopathology score.MethodsThe authors recruited 105 children in the outpatient unit of the child and adolescent psychiatry department of the pediatric hospital of Coimbra and their 117 parents. Parents were assessed using the Portuguese version of Neo Five-Factor Inventory and children psychopathology scores were rated by child and adolescent psychiatrists using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale for Children.ResultsForty-nine children (46.7%) were male and 56 (53.3%) were female, with a mean age of 12.5 ± 3.2 and 13.6 ± 2.9, respectively. Twenty parents (17.1%) were male and 97 (82.9%) were female, with a mean age of 45.8 ± 4.1 and 41.2 ± 5.4, respectively. After excluding children diagnosed with Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorders and intellectual developmental disorder, Pearson's correlation coefficients were significant between: parents’ neuroticism and children Uncooperativeness (0.211), Manipulativeness (0.238), Hallucinations (0.257), Sleep difficulties (0.296) and Disorientation (0.204); parents’ agreeableness and children hostility (−0.228); and parent's conscientiousness and children disorientation (−0.231), all P < 0.05.ConclusionsThese preliminary results suggest that parental personality traits may influence psychopathological outcomes in their children. Data are still being collected to clarify the nature of this relationship.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

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IntroductionSleep problems are common in childhood. Disturbed sleep behaviours are among the most common concerns that parents of young children bring to their physicians. Defining disordered sleep behaviour is difficult because of important differences in sleep patterns at different developmental stages. The sudden onset of a sleep disorder or problem can be due to physical, mental and/or environmental factors.ObjectivesTo present the case of a young boy admitted to the emergency department of the Pediatric Hospital of Coimbra due to a sudden inability to sleep.ResultsA 6-year-old boy with previous language delay and undergoing regular psychotherapy due to family distress issues presented with inability to sleep for more than 10–15 minutes. The disturbances started 2 weeks prior to presentation and occurred more than 10 times per night. Immediately after each event the patient was screaming, frightened, unable to communicate normally with his mother. Since the beginning of the episodes the patient's social performance had declined, he was easily irritated, aggressive and with dysphoric mood.The patient was admitted and evaluated by child psychiatry in the emergency department. An extensive psychiatric evaluation revealed familyrelated stressors, depression and anxiety symptoms. An electroencephalogram was performed which revealed frontal lobe epilepsy.After the diagnosis treatment sodium valproate was started (30mg/kg/day). The symptoms reversed.ConclusionsThis case highlights how psychiatric manifestations or comorbidity may interfere in the understanding of clinical manifestations of sleep disorders in children. In fact, as in this case, symptoms may be related to underlying conditions, namely epilepsy.

Introduction:Cerebral palsy refers to a wide range of motor abnormalities which result from damage to the developing or immature brain. Parents of children with developmental disabilities experience heightened stress, impaired mental health, sense of devaluation and self-blame, frequently causing conflicts on the couple subsystem.Objectives:This paper aims to describe psychiatric and psychosocial maladjustment caused by this emotional and physically demanding pathology.Methods:We describe a 8-year-old boy who developed hetero aggressivity admitted to our outpatient clinic.Results:His mother refers alert signs since patient's neonatal period, with axial hypotonia and global psychomotor development retardation. He also presented absence seizures, several congenital malformations that led to urological, otorrinolaringological and stomatological surgeries. While performing mental state evaluation we could clinically assess ADHD, as well as marked language difficulties, which made us consider introduction of psycho-stimulants, besides mood stabilizers prescribed by his neurologist, after excluding cardiaovascular abnormalities. During the various appointments serious problems were found within family relationships, specially father's difficulty in accepting his youngest son disability, which made us intervene holistically, supporting and validating patient's mother and brother work and efforts and psychoeducating his father in order to improve his psychosocial emotional development.Conclusions:Psycho-social programs and coping strategies should be developed to respond to individual changing needs and to provide necessary support for the special needs of these families.

Introduction: Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) is a widely used outcome measure to assess 24 different psychiatric symptoms. For several reasons it is important to study psychiatric subsyndromes instead of investigating separate symptoms because these subsyndromes may point to a common neurobiological pathogenesis or may have similar treatment. Objectives: The focus of the present study was to determine the factor structure of the BPRS for psychiatric inpatients with different diagnostics. The aim of this study was to detect subscales of the 24-item BPRS that could bring some relevant information to sustain the daily practice. Methods: Factor analysis of symptom ratings recorded on the BPRS for a sample of 139 inpatients, during the first week of hospitalization at the department of Psychiatry of HUC between April 2010 and September 2011. Principal component analysis (with Varimax rotation) was used for factor analysis. Results: The results of the exploratory factor analyses obtained eight factors, which explained 73,225% of the variance in the data. The first factor represents 19.511% of the total variance, and the other seven factors represents, respectively, 13.069%,