Self-reported depression in psychiatric, pediatric, and normal populations.

The present study compared Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) scores of child psychiatry inpatients, child psychiatry outpatients, and pediatric inpatients with those of a group of matched normal children. The analysis of variance revealed a statistically significant difference between groups. Posthoc tests indicated that there were no significant differences between the three clinical groups and the normal control group. However, the psychiatric inpatients had significantly higher scores than the pediatric inpatients or the psychiatric outpatients. Results were discussed relative to previous findings and in terms of needing to match samples by age and gender.