Mood Disorders: Assessment, Risk Factors, and Outcome

In this issue of Focus on Childhood and Adolescent Mental Health, we include 4 articles describing studies examining assessment of or risk factors for developing mood disorders in youth.

A series of 2 articles, by Youngstrom and colleagues and Meyers and Youngstrom, describes the utility of the General Behavior Inventory (GBI) as a screening tool for the assessment of mood disorders in children and adolescents. Specifically, in the first article, Youngstrom and colleagues describe the development of a 10-item parent-rated GBI that was able to discriminate between bipolar and unipolar depression as well as between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder.