Use of the Children’s Depression Rating Scale in an Inpatient Psychiatric Population

The Children’s Rating Scale is a useful & reliable instrument for measuring the severity of depression in children. The scale was initialy used in pediatric liaison population. This study reports its use in consecutive admissions to a child inpatient unit. Systematic evaluations of the children resulted in many diagnosis of depression which were missed by the clinical staff. 2 relatively inexperienced raters did nearly as well as 2 raters who originated the scale.