Adolescent depression and the Child Behavior Checklist.

Using receiver operating characteristic methods, the authors planned to assess the diagnostic accuracy of a measure of depression extracted from the Child Behavior Checklist in a group of 667 referred adolescents with DSM-III diagnoses. This depression scale was based on a depression factor found by Nurcombe et al. in Child Behavior Checklists from adolescent inpatients. Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that Child Behavior Checklist-Nurcombe scores were able to discriminate between subjects with and without major depression with an accuracy comparable to that reported for the Dexamethasone Suppression Test (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.78).