CBCL Clinical Scales Discriminate Prepubertal Children with Structured Interview—Derived Diagnosis of Mania from Those with ADHD

To evaluate the discriminative ability of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to identify children with structured interview-derived diagnosis of bipolar disorder. We evaluated the convergence of CBCL scales with the diagnosis of mania in 31 children with mania, 120 children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and 77 prepubertal normal control children aged 12 years or younger. We evaluated the strength of association between each CBCL scale and structured interview-derived diagnoses with total predictive value and the odds ratio. Excellent convergence was found between the CBCL scales of Delinquent Behavior, Aggressive Behavior, Somatic Complaints, Anxious/Depressed, and Thought Problems and the diagnosis of mania. These findings indicate that the CBCL could serve as a rapid and useful screening instrument to identify manic children in clinical settings.