ABSTRACT
Most epidemiological research on child and adolescent psychopathology, including major depression, has been conducted in Western countries (Angold, 1988; Bird, 1996; Fleming and Offord, 1990). Methodological
problems have been reduced in criterion and information variance, particularly since the early 1980s when standardized diagnostic criteria and structured diagnostic interview schedules came into wide use (Hodges, 1993; Roberts et al., 1998). In the United States, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Methods for the Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders (MECA) Study addressed methodological issues to develop feasible, reliable, and valid methods for the assessment of mental disorders, risk factors, and service use in youths aged 9 through 17 years in a largescale, population-based survey (Lahey et al., 1996). The NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children Version 2.3 (DISC-2.3) used in the MECA study was examined for its acceptability, reliability, and validity (Lahey et al., 1996; Schwab-Stone et al., 1996; Shaffer et al., 1996). For major depressive disorder, concurrent validity was good and higher in youth informants (0.73 and greater) than parent informants (0.55 to 0.60). In contrast, test-retest agreements were moderate in the latter (0.54 to 0.62) and marginal to poor in the former (0.34 to 0.45) (Schwab-Stone et al., 1996). In the MECA study, the prevalence of major depression was 4.8%.
