Children's Depression Inventory (CDI)
The Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) is a self-report questionnaire designed to help children and adolescents aged seven to seventeen express their feelings related to sadness and depression. Developed by Maria Kovacs in 1977, the CDI allows young individuals to indicate their emotional states through a series of questions, providing insights into their mental health. The original version includes twenty-seven items, while the updated CDI2 features twenty-eight items and a shorter twelve-item version for quick assessments. Respondents choose from three options for each question, reflecting varying levels of severity regarding their emotional experiences over the past two weeks.
The CDI has gained global recognition for its effectiveness in assessing depressive symptoms while taking into account age and gender norms, which helps ensure accurate interpretations of results. While the tool is practical and reliable, professionals are encouraged to use it in conjunction with other assessment methods, such as structured diagnostic interviews and observations, to obtain a comprehensive understanding of a child's mental health. This multi-faceted approach considers other potential issues that could influence CDI scores, emphasizing the importance of a holistic view of the child's emotional and psychological functioning. Overall, the CDI serves as a valuable tool for practitioners seeking to understand and address children's depressive experiences.
Children's Depression Inventory (CDI)
- DATE: 1977 forward
- TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Psychopathology
SIGNIFICANCE: The Children’s Depression Inventory is a self-report questionnaire that allows children to report their feelings of sadness and depression. This widely used questionnaire can be completed by children and adolescents themselves.
Introduction
The Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) was first developed in 1977 by Maria Kovacs. It was based on the Beck Depression Inventory, which is a self-report measure for depression for adults. The Children's Depression Inventory 2nd Edition (CDI2) was published in 2011. These inventories were designed to assess depression in children and adolescents from the ages of seven to seventeen. The CDI has twenty-seven items that ask children to report on their possible depressive experiences, such as feeling sad, crying a lot, not having fun anymore, being tired, not wanting to live, having trouble sleeping, experiencing low self-esteem, and having difficulties with friends. Questions in the CDI2 are similar, but the second version has twenty-eight questions, and the CDI2 Self-Report Short version has twelve.
The CDI is worded so that children and adolescents can read the questions themselves and write down their own answers. Each item offers three statements that signify varying levels of severityfrom no problems to severe problems. Children and adolescents are asked to choose the statement that is most reflective of how they have been feeling within the past two weeks.
For example, one item gives children the following three optionsI am sad once in a while, I am sad many times, and I am sad all the time. Children are asked to put a mark by the sentence that describes their feelings. The first sentence is something that even people who are not depressed would be likely to endorse, whereas the third sentence is more reflective of .
There is no specific item that confirms a diagnosis of depression. Instead, the scores of all items on the CDI are combined to provide an overall picture of the child’s mental state. The measure has been normed so that a child’s responses are compared against other children of that age and gender. The idea is that children’s answers should be compared with the average or normative for that age and gender. Through this norming process, professionals can be sure not to diagnose a child who is just feeling normal amounts of distress. Overall, the CDI can help professionals gain a better understanding of children’s and adolescents’ feelings of depression and related concerns.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The CDI is widely used worldwide. This commonality allows easy communication between professionals, which facilitates research and data collection concerning CDI’s effective use in various ethnic and cultural groups. This informs new versions and updates to the inventory that improve its accuracy. The norms and standardization sample of the CDI allow professionals to have confidence in their interpretations of children’s and adolescents’ depressive symptoms. The strong psychometric properties suggest that the CDI is reliablestable across groupsand validmeaningful and measuring depression rather than another variable. Additionally, the results can differentiate between major and persistent depressive disorder. In addition, the CDI is practical to use because it is inexpensive, simple to administer, and easy to score.
Even with these strengths, the CDI has some limitations. Although it was created to assess depression only, later research suggests that it also assesses other problems. For example, children who have difficulty with school or who have problems with peers because of excessive fighting might receive high scores on the CDI. Thus, it is important for professionals to assess many aspects of the child’s life rather than relying on the CDI alone to help diagnose depression.
Other Methods to Assess Childhood Depression
Even with a well-respected measure such as the CDI, it is standard practice for professionals to use a variety of measures before diagnosing depression in children and adolescents. In addition to using the CDI, professionals could conduct a structured diagnostic interviewsuch as the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Childrenwith the child to assess for symptoms of depression and other psychological difficulties. Professionals may also want to observe the child, either in their office or in the classroom, to evaluate how the child interacts with others and to assess for depressive symptoms such as withdrawal or crying.
In addition to gathering information from the child directly, it is incumbent on professionals to use multiple informants like parents and teachers to assess depression. The term “multiple informants” is used to suggest that other individuals in the child’s life can provide useful information about the child’s psychological symptoms. Structured diagnostic interviews can be conducted with parents about their child, and both parents and teachers can complete behavior checklists that might shed more light on the child’s psychological functioning.
Many widely used behavior checklists, such as the Child Behavior Checklist and the Teacher Report Form, both developed by Tom Achenbach, can be used in conjunction with the CDI. Other inventories include the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Weinberg Screening Affective Scale (WSAS). Professionals should try to get an overall view of the child’s functioning and the family’s functioning rather than using the CDI by itself to diagnose depression.
Bibliography
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