The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) and the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS; Reynolds, 1987) were administered to 56 female and 44 male psychiatric inpatients whose ages ranged from 12 to 17 years old. The Cronbach coefficient alpha(s) for the BDI-II and RADS were, respectively, .92 and .91 and indicated comparably high levels of internal consistency. The correlation between the BDI-II and RADS total scores was .84,p <.001. Binormal receiver-operating-characteristic analyses indicated that both instruments were comparably effective in differentiating inpatients who were and were not diagnosed with a major depressive disorder; the areas under the ROC curves for the BDI-II and RADS were, respectively, .78 and .76. The results (a) indicate that the BDI-II and the RADS have similar psychometric characteristics and (b) support the convergent validity of the BDI-II for assessing self-reported depression in adolescent inpatients.

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To assess whether the mean Beck Depression Inventory-II scores of adolescents who were diagnosed with unipolar depressive disorders differed with respect to age, the inventory was administered to 144 (60%) female and 96 (40%) male outpatients between 13 and 17 yr. who were diagnosed with depressive disorders. The internal consistency of the scores was high (coefficient alpha=.89). A factorial analysis of variance was used to test for the main effects of age, sex, ethnicity, type of depressive disorder, comorbidity, and the two-way interactions of age with the other main effects. The mean scores were not differentiated by age or by the interactions of age with the other effects. The lack of age differences in this 5-year range on the mean scores of clinically depressed adolescents was discussed with respect to previous findings that have reported such differences in adolescents and adults.

This study provides preliminary evidence to suggest that edivoxetine at doses ≤0.3 mg/kg/day is safe and may improve ADHD symptoms in pediatric patients. These results require confirmation in larger, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials.