• Antje-Kathrin Allgaier, Barbara Frühe, Kathrin Pietsch, Barbara Saravo, Martina Baethmann, and Gerd Schulte-Körne.
• Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, and Department of Paediatrics, Hospital Dritter Orden, Germany. antje.allgaier@med.uni-muenchen.de
• J Psychosom Res. 2012 Nov 1;73(5):369-74.

ObjectiveThis is the first study to validate and to compare the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and its short version (CDI:S) as screening tools for medically ill children.MethodsA sample of 406 pediatric hospital patients, aged 9 to 12 years (56.2% male, 77.1% inpatients), completed the German CDI. Criterion validity of the 26-item CDI and the 10-item CDI:S was calculated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. DSM-IV diagnoses of depression based on the structured diagnostic interview for mental disorders in children and adolescents (Kinder-DIPS) served as the reference standard. Areas under the ROC curves as well as sensitivities and specificities for the optimal cutoffs were compared for both versions.ResultsDiagnoses of major or minor depression were established for 7.4% of the children. Areas under the curve for the 26-item CDI (87.7%) and the 10-item CDI:S (88.2%) were comparable. For the CDI, the cutoff≥12 yielded the best balance between sensitivity (83.3%) and specificity (82.7%). At the optimal cutoff≥3, the CDI:S resulted in a high sensitivity of 93.3% and a specificity of 70.7%. Thus, the CDI:S proved to be as sensitive as the CDI, but was less specific than the full-length version.ConclusionBoth the CDI and the CDI:S are valid screening instruments for depression in medically ill children. The sensitive and brief CDI:S is a promising tool in time-pressed settings such as pediatric care, but has to be followed by a thorough diagnostic assessment to rule out false positive cases.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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