A revised anchored version of the BPRS-C for childhood psychiatric disorders

The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale for Children (BPRS-C) is increasingly us ed as an outcome measure in research, managed care, and public sector child /adolescent clinical settings. The BPRS-C was developed to provide a descri ptive profile of symptoms applicable to a broad range of child and adolesce nt psychiatric disorders. Its use frequently includes trained and untrained clinician raters with differing degrees of experience and training in chil d and adolescent disorders. Unfortunately, this latter approach leads to a large amount of variability in scores and consequently reduces its overall reliability. This study reports on a revised BPRS-C with the addition of cl inical descriptive anchors designed to improve reliability and validity for both trained and untrained raters. A sample of 4,733 children and adolesce nts seen in 10 public sector facilities was administered the BPRS-C along w ith other standard clinical measures (Child Behavior Checklist and Global A ssessment of Functioning). Additional reliability data were gathered in a U niversity Medical Center child and adolescent research site with both train ed and untrained raters. The data indicated improvement in overall reliabil ity and validity scores, good internal consistency, and improved factor sco res. The addition of an overall total severity score may prove to be a usef ul outcome measure for assessment of treatment response.