New review in Archives on autonomic nervous system

http://m.adc.bmj.com/content/early/2014/02/26/archdischild-2012-301863.full

This (paywalled) article on the archives website, by Corinne Rees, raises interesting questions about the role of autonomic dysfunction in functional disorders, in mediating anxiety, and in sustaining the link between early adverse experience and later psychopathology.
The problem is the authors obvious emotional investment in the importance of the ANS. It reads like an opinion piece, not a careful review of the evidence. There’s passionate advocacy of the ANS’s importance, but little discussion of the fact that it’s dysfunction could have other causes itself, be they physical or psychological. Indeed, the fact that the ANS is so difficult to define is not mentioned. Finally, although patient and parent reports are of course important, to reproduce these reports uncritically in a  review article, without research corroboration, may raise a few eyebrows.
Nonetheless, this is an essential read, whether you 100% agree or not.

Sleep Interference Effects of Pathological Electronic Media Use during Adolescence – Online First – Springer

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11469-013-9461-2#
This is a weird paper. They have some good data on the prevalence of poor sleep in adolescence, and also on electronic media use. They make a plausible link between media use at bedtime and delayed sleep initiation. So far, so sound.
they then import the notion of pathological media use, which they define as use which is unregulated and affects daily activities. This is diagnosed on parent report, which seems to import all sorts of subjective judgments into this category, which not, as as I’m aware, validated.
They then draw a causal link between pathological media use and the poor sleep quality. To an extent this is sensible- using electronic media at bedtime will delay sleep, but the problem is that they don’t consider why the media use has become pathological… Is the a population of young people seeking respite from mental health or family problems, having their phones blamed for their problems, when perhaps a more understanding attitude, exploring what has gone wrong for this person and their sleep, might be more helpful.