Scale for depressed mood, as part of the Kiddie-SADS - Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL) Diagnostic Interview

NOTE: Sometimes the child will initially give a negative answer at the start of the interview but will become obviously sad as the interview goes on. Then these questions should be repeated eliciting the present mood and using it as an example to determine its frequency. Similarly, if the mother's report is that the child is sad most of the time and the child denies it, the child should be confronted with the mother's opinion and then asked why he thinks his mother believes he feels sad so often. NOTE: When a child or parent reports frequent short periods of sadness throughout the day, it is likely that this child is always sad and only reports the exacerbations, in which case the rating of depressive mood will be 3. Thus, it is always essential to ask about the rest of the time: "Besides these times when you felt ( ), during the rest of the time, did you feel happy or were you more sad than your friends?"

2016-12-22

Kaufman J, Birmaher B, Brent D, Rao U, Flynn C, Moreci P, Williamson D, Ryan N (1997) Schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia for school-age children-present and lifetime version (K-SADS-PL): initial reliability and validity data. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry . Available from: http://www.psychiatry.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/assessments/ksads-pl.pdf

Refers to subjective feelings of depression based on verbal complaints or feeling depressed, sad, blue, gloomy, very unhappy, down, empty, bad feelings, feels like crying. Do not include ideational items (like discouragement, pessimism, worthlessness), suicide attempts or depressed appearance. Some children will deny feeling "sad" and report feeling only "bad" so it is important to inquire specifically about each dysphoric affect. Do not count feelings of anxiety or tension. Irritability without any other persistent dysphoric affect should not be rated here. In the interview with parent, mother's "gut feeling" (empathic sensing) that child frequently feels depressed can be taken as positive evidence of child's depressive mood if parent is not concurrently depressed.

Have you ever felt sad, blue, down, or empty? Did you feel like crying? When was that? Do you feel like that now? Was there ever another time you felt like that? Did you have any other bad feelings? Did you have a bad feeling all the time that you couldn't get rid of? Did you cry or were you tearful? Did you feel like that all the time, some of the time? (Percent of awake time: summation of % of all labels if they do not occur simultaneously. (Assessment of diurnal variation can secondarily clarify daily duration of depressive mood). Did it come and go? How often? Every day? How long did it last? What do you think brought it on? (Assess relationship between depressed mood and separation from caregiver.) Did you feel sad when your mother was away? If separation from mother is given as a cause: Did you feel like that when mother was with you? Did you feel a little better or was the feeling totally gone? Could other people tell when you were sad? How could they tell? Did you look different?

Mon May 07 19:39:24 EDT 2018

NIH/CIT/FITBIR

Malaika Schwartz

NIH/CIT/FITBIR

Olga Vovk

olga.vovk@nih.gov