PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT OF 5-10 YEAR OLD CHILDREN AT RISK FOR AFFECTIVE DISORDER

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This project concerns the offspring data and follow-up data derived from psychiatric interviews of the five to ten year old children of the families. At time of recruitment one child was between five and eight years of age, and one child was between two and three years of age. At initial assessment, the older child was administered the CAS (Child Assessment Schedule), and diagnosed according to the DSM-III criteria. Three years later, the younger children, now 5-8 years of age, and the older children, now 7-10 years of age, were both assessed with the CAS instrument and both groups of children were diagnosed using the DSM-III criteria. Thus, this project provides data concerning child psychiatric status as a function of parental psychopathology, as well as data concerning short term consistency of psychiatric status in children of these ages. More of the children whose mothers had affective disorder received DSM-III diagnoses. This trend reached significance for the younger children at the second time of assessment, but did not reach significance for the older children. Also more of the children whose parents have major affective disorder received diagnoses at both times of assessment, than did the children whose parents have no history of psychiatric disorder. Longitudinal assessment of the children of affectively ill and healthy parents will enable us to identify ages at which the appearance of affective disturbance is common, but not predictive of continued psychopathology, and hopefully, points in development when the appearance of affective disturbance is predictive of continued psychopathology.