Adequate Screening of Youngsters for Depressive Characteristics

Abstract

Introduction. In order to set up an effective early-detection of depressive symptoms in youngsters, the current study aims to investigate whether two measure moments of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) improve screening and whether a multi-informant procedure is superior compared to a single-informant procedure thereby controlling for comorbid symptoms. Method. Youngsters (10-15 years) filled in the CDI and an Anxiety Scale at Time 1 and the CDI and Youth Self Report one week later. Next, a structured clinical interview was administered. The Child Behaviour CheckList was filled in by the parents. Results. Two measure moments of the CDI are not more accurate in capturing disordered mood changes. Furthermore, parent reports were no significant contributor to the variance over and above the CDI. Discussion. A second moment does not increase screening accuracy. Further research on setting up an effective multistage screening procedure for depressive symptoms for youngsters is however necessary.

Repetitive thinking about the mother during distress moderates the link between children's attentional breadth around the mother and depressive symptoms in middle childhood

“…This mean score can discriminate children with major depressive disorders from nondepressed children (Kovacs, 2003). A cut-off mean score of 0.59 maximizes the specificity and sensitivity of the Dutch version of the CDI (Theuwis, Braet, Roelofs, Stark, & Vandevivere, 2013). Overall, the CDI is a reliable and valid questionnaire (Kovacs, 2003;Saylor, Finch, Spirito, & Bennett, 1984).…”

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“…Secondly, no significant effects were found regarding children's IP. We assume that as part of the TIME-IN intervention, teachers in the intervention group became more aware of children's emotional problems throughout the school year, which might have contaminated the study findings or that external observers (both parents and teachers) were not ideal informants on children's IP (see, e.g., Theuwis et al, 2013).…”