Child Depression Inventory Health Article

Precautions

The CDI shares certain drawbacks with other self-report measures used in children, namely that children do not have the same level of ability as adults to understand and report strong internal emotions. On the other hand, children have the same ability as adults to modify their answers on the CDI and similar tests to reflect what they think are the desired answers rather than what they actually feel. This phenomenon is variously known as "faking good" or "faking bad," depending on the bias of the modified answers. Some researchers have also observed that children who do not have age-appropriate reading skills may receive an inaccurate diagnosis on the basis of their CDI score.

The results of the CDI should be evaluated only by a trained professional psychologist or psychiatrist, not by a parent, teacher, or school nurse.

Because depressive symptoms fluctuate somewhat in children as well as in adults, the author of the test recommends retesting children who score positive on the CDI, with a two- to four-week interval between the test and the retest. A child who screens positive on the CDI should receive a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation by a licensed mental health professional. The evaluation should include interviews with the child or adolescent; the parents or other caregivers; and, when possible, such other observers as teachers, social service personnel, or the child's primary care physician.

Description

The CDI is self-rated, which means that the child or adolescent being evaluated records their answers to the questions on the test sheet, as distinct from giving verbal answers to questions that are then analyzed and recorded by the examiner. Other self-rated instruments for assessing depression in children include the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Weinberg Screening Affective Scale (WSAS).

Each question on the CDI consists of three possible responses; the child or adolescent being evaluated selects the response that most closely describes him or her over the preceding two weeks. The CDI is designed to make quantitative measurements of the following symptoms of depression: mood disturbances; capacity for enjoyment; depressed self-evaluation; disturbances in behavior toward other people; and vegetative symptoms, which include fatigue, oversleeping, having difficulty with activities requiring effort, and other symptoms of passivity or inactivity.