Evidence-based assessment/Instruments/Child Mania Rating Scale

The Child Mania Rating Scales (CMRS) are 21-item diagnostic screening measure designed to identify symptoms of mania in children and adolescents ages 9–17 using diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV as reported by parents and teachers. The measure interviews the child's mood and behavior symptoms, asking parents and teachers to rate how often the symptoms have caused a problem for the child in the past month. Clinical studies have found the CMRS-P to be reliable and valid in the assessment of children's bipolar symptoms. The CMRS has also been found to be useful in differentiating cases of pediatric bipolar disorder from ADHD or no disorder, as well as delineating bipolar subtypes. A meta-analysis comparing the different rating scales available found that the CMRS was one of the three best performing scales in terms of telling cases with bipolar disorder apart from other clinical diagnoses.

Scoring and interpretation
For each item, parents or teachers rate the frequency with which a given mood or behavior has caused a problem for their child in the past month using a Likert-type scale.[1] Each response is assigned a point value for scoring purposes.

"Never/rarely:" 0 points

"Sometimes:" 1 point

"Often:" 2 points

"Very often:" 3 points

Points are summed to yield a total score. If the total score is 20 or higher, it is recommended that the child or adolescent receive an evaluation from a trained mental health professional.[2] It should not be used to make a diagnosis of mania or hypomania without consulting a clinician.

Peer Reviewed Research
The first paper published on the CMRS was in 2006, and research has appeared intermittently since then. The CMRS consistently has excellent evidence of reliability. It has showed excellent evidence of discriminative validity in a meta-analysis looking at performance with children and teenagers. Several studies have shown evidence of treatment sensitivity as well.

PubMed Search: Click here for a current search on Pub Med. This is a free database that covers medicine, so some articles published in psychology journals might be missing. The entries will usually include abstracts, and sometimes will include a version of full text (especially if the project was grant funded). This search is designed to be highly specific (i.e., not including lots of irrelevant articles), but it might miss some articles.

Links

 * EffectiveChildTherapy.Org information on Bipolar Disorder
 * Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Screeners

 * Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance: Online screener for bipolar disorder

Downloads

 * (21 item English version for parents to complete.)
 * CMRS