The Child Bipolar Questionnaire (CBQ) A Screening Instrument for Juvenile-onset Bipolar Disorder

In order to address the significant gap in available psychiatric rating scale instruments designed to assess juvenile-onset bipolar disorder symptoms, the Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation (JBRF) has supported the development of an assessment instrument for this purpose. This scale, called the Child Bipolar Questionnaire (CBQ), is a 65-item behavioral assessment tool. Preliminary data indicate that the CBQ has adequate-toexcellent test-retest and inter-rater reliability characteristics; that it is internally consistent. The instrument is written in simple English (estimated reading grade level = 8), and it may be used with either a parent/parent substitute or a clinician as the assessor. Some preliminary work examining utility and reliability of the instrument when self-administered is quite promising (data to be published). A Spanish-language version is available. Either alone or in combination with other psychiatric rating scales, the CBQ may prove to be an effective screening tool for early-onset bipolar disorder. Via the Internet-based data collection system of the JBRF, www.bpchildresearch.org), we have assembled data germane to this issue. The JBRF website data collection system has been fully operative since early 2003 and CBQ data, and other diagnostically-useful information have now been assembled on several thousand children/adolescents. For a substantial fraction of the children and adolescents for whom website accounts at the JBRF website have been established, the parents/guardians report that there has been a diagnosis of bipolar disorder previously assigned by a physician (usually pediatrician or child psychiatrist) or other health professional. The availability of JBRF’s large and growing database with information of testable reliability on both psychiatric rating scale data and prior/current bipolar disorder diagnostic status provides a potentially rich opportunity for the development of a screening algorithm designed to identify children/adolescents with a strong diathesis for, or early onset of, bipolar disorder. Accordingly, we assembled CBQ data, and related parent-provided history and current symptoms information via the JBRF’s Internet-based data acquisition system.