Psychiatric Diagnostic Interviews for Children and Adolescents: A Comparative Study
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 05/04/2012
Clinical Article
Angold A et al. – The Development and Well–Being Assessment is shorter and cases were probably more severe, making it a good choice for clinical trials, but the user cannot examine the data in detail. The Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children and Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment are similar in length and training needs.
Methods- Roughly equal numbers of males and females of white and African American ethnicity, aged 9 to 12 and 13 to 16 years, were recruited from primary care pediatric clinics.
- Participants (N = 646) were randomly assigned to receive two of the three interviews, in counterbalanced order.
- Five modules were used: any depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
- At two sessions about 1 week apart, parent and child completed one of two interviews plus five screening questionnaires.
- When interviewed with the DAWBA, 17.7% of youth had one or more diagnoses, compared with 47.1% (DISC) and 32.4% (CAPA).
- The excess of DISC diagnoses was accounted for by specific phobias.
- Agreement between interview pairs was 0.13 to 0.48 for DAWBA-DISC comparisons, 0.21 to 0.61 for DISC-CAPA comparisons, and 0.23 to 0.48 for CAPA-DAWBA comparisons.
- DAWBA-only cases were associated with higher parent-report questionnaire scores than DISC/DAWBA cases, but equivalent child-report scores.
