Parent and Child Contributions

Abstract

To examine the unique cases contributed by parent and child informants to diagnostic classification, with the goal of identifying those diagnoses for which either or both informants are needed. The authors examined survey data from the Methods for the Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders (MECA) Study, a 4-community epidemiology survey of 9- to 17-year-old children and their parents. Parent-child dyads (1,285 pairs) were independently interviewed by lay persons with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children; a subset of these pairs (n = 247) were also interviewed by clinicians. Agreement between parents and children was examined with respect to levels of impairment, need for/use of services, and clinicians' diagnoses. Parents and children rarely agreed on the presence of diagnostic conditions, regardless of diagnostic type. Nonetheless, most child-only- and parent-only-identified diagnoses were similarly related to impairment and clinical validation, with...