The KSADS-COMP for Child Psychiatric Diagnostic and Intake Assessment

The Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children—r Kiddie-SADS/KSADS—is not just for research anymore. The KSADS-COMP, the web-based version of the KSADS interview, has been streamlined to enhance its use in routine clinical practice. It creates instantaneous symptom and diagnostic reports, and EHR modifiable documents to meet standard charting requirements. The introductory interview attains key information for treatment planning and assesses a variety of contextual factors that modify risk (e.g., firearms in the home, gender non-conformity, trauma history). There are three KSADS-COMP versions: 1) clinician-administered; 2) parent self-administered; and youth self-administered with videoclips to facilitate administration.

• Develop the skills necessary to use the clinician-administered KSADS-COMP in routine practice for diagnostic and intake evaluations.
• Independently run through the youth and parent self-administered versions of the KSADS-COMP.
• Discuss how these assessment tools can augment routine clinical practice and collect invaluable comprehensive data to help with triage and treatment planning for youth on long waiting lists and in settings with no or few trained mental health clinicians.
• Describe methods to facilitate differential diagnoses among the most common child and adolescent psychiatric disorders with overlapping symptoms.

Joan Kaufman, PhD