The Brown University Child & Adolescent Psychopharmacology Update | 2019
Researchers calculate tool for measuring depression change in children and teens
Abstract
How can you tell if depression treatment is working in children and adolescents? Despite the only modest treatment effects, with 30 to 50% of youth not responding to treatment, there are ways to track change, new research has found. Using measurement‐based care (MBC) can help. Their study produced reliable change indices (RCIs) per Jacobson and Truax (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2002127) for the Patient Health Questionnaire‐9 items, Modified for Adolescents (PHQ‐9A), and the Short Moods and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ), two commonly used tools to assess outcomes in treatment of youth depression. They validated the tool with their RCI.