Pediatric Irritability Comes of Age

Irritability has been an identified symptom of psychopathology since the publishing of the first DSM in 1952. At that point, the manual confined irritability to the diagnosis of mania. In subsequent editions, however, irritability has been incorporated as a component of many more disorders-now more than a dozen-and yet it remains relatively poorly defined. In the past few years, attempts have been made both in this Journal and elsewhere to clearly define irritability and the science behind it.