Preventing Depression in the Children of Depressed African American Mothers

Children Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1992) is a widely-used self-report scale of depressive symptoms suitable for use by youth ranging from 7 to 17 years. The CDI is a 27-item scale that is self-rated and symptom-oriented. The 27 items on the assessment are grouped into five major factor areas. The item score are rated 0-2 with a total scores summed and converted to T scores. The total T score ranges from 33 to 100 with high scores indicating higher levels of depressive symptoms.

Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC; March et al., 1997) is a self-report instrument that measures a broad range of anxiety symptoms in youth. The MASC consists of 39 items using a 4-point Likert scale that are distributed across four major factors, three of which can be parsed into two subfactors each. Main and subfactors include (1) physical symptoms (tense/restless and somatic/autonomic), (2) social anxiety (humiliation/rejection and public performance fears), (3) harm avoidance (perfectionism and anxious coping), and (4) separation anxiety. Scores are summed and converted to T-scores. The total T score ranges from 25 to 90 with higher scores representing greater levels of anxiety.

Understanding Mood Disorders Questionnaire (UMDQ; Gavazzi, Fristad, & Law, 1997) measures attributions and knowledge of symptoms, course, and treatment of mood disorders and a symptom checklist. It has 39 items and two subscales. A range of total score is 0 to 59. The first 20 questions are true/false questions and correct responses are scored 2 points each. Nineteen questions are a checklist of symptoms and correct identification of those depression and manic symptoms are scored 1 point each. All items are summed for a total score. Higher scores indicate greater knowledge of mood disorders. Both maternal and child reporters completed this measure.

Child's Report on Parental Behavior Inventory (CRPBI; Schludermann & Schludermann, 1970) assesses children's and parents' perceptions of parental acceptance, permitting psychological autonomy, and level of parental control. The 10-item acceptance scale which assesses parental warmth was administered. The acceptable scale has items scored from 1 to 3 (not like me, somewhat like me, a lot like me). Items are summed with a total range is 10 to 30. Higher scores represents greater warmth exhibited by mother to child. Separate forms are available for both child and parent report.