The utility of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) for differentiating adolescents with depressive disorders from adolescents with non affective psychiatric disorders was examined using a sample of 93 psychiatric outpatients and 26 inpatients. The Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents (DICA) was administered to establish the patients' diagnosis. Psychiatric diagnoses were made by experienced clinicians who used all available information on the patient. The BDI scores discriminated between patients with depressive disorders and patients with non affective psychiatric disorders. This differentiation was true for boys and girls, outpatients and inpatients. The classification accuracy of the instrument was 75% at thresholds of 11 and 16 on the scale. The results indicate that the BDI is a useful instrument for screening for depression in adolescents, and can also be used in conjunction with other tests. However, the BDI by itself is inadequate to establish a diagnosis of depression.
Ninety-six psychiatrically ill adolescents admitted to an adolescent inpatient service were systematically assessed to determine the morbidity of conduct disorder (CD), with other Axis I psychiatric disorders. Twenty-six (27%) met DSM-111 criteria for CD in addition to other Axis I disorders. A CD diagnosis was significantly associated with substance abuse, and attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity. Although CD was found in 21% of depressives it was more commonly found in patients with psychotic disorders (25%) and bipolar (42%) disorders. These findings suggest that CD may be commonly found in a variety of adolescent psychiatric disorders. The implications of this finding for pharmacologic treatment of CD, the clinical assessment of the CD patient, and possible relationships between CD and adolescent psychiatric disorders are discussed.
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