Kristen Davidson, department of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center and a 2000 graduate of Hamilton College, returned to Hamilton on November 4 to give an informal presentation for the psychology department. Davidson's lecture was titled "Comparison of Informant Report in a Sample of Children with Mood Disorders: How Well Do Parents and Children Agree?" She examined discrepancies or similarities between parents and their children who are affected by various mood disorders. The psychology department sponsored the lecture.
Davidson discussed her research which focused on both parent and child reports of the child's mood symptoms before and after participation in a group psycho-educational treatment program for families of children with mood disorders. She explained in detail the procedure and the methods used, including how she measured the severity of the child's mood disorder. Her study provided a diagnostic assessment and follow-up psycho-education for families and children. She said she hoped that multi-family psycho-education groups would help educate families and provide them with any support or skills they may have needed to better understand the disorder and the symptoms correlated to the disorder.
As part of her study she organized structured interviews and had both the parents and children provide self-reports regarding the mood disorder affecting their family. A small group of clinicians rated the reports and gave a consensual diagnosis regarding the illness. She hypothesized that there would be high levels of agreement between structured interview and clinician rating; there would be low levels of agreement between parent and child perception and reporting of the disease and agreement between the two parties (child and parent) would increase with education.
Davidson described her results and concluded overall agreement between parent and child was low. She also explained the differences between correlations and discrepancies in her project, and how the high variability in the project may have accounted for the lack of statistically significant changes following treatment.
Davidson concluded her discussion by talking about other factors related to parent-child disagreement and described in detail several different options for future research on the subject.
The lecture was followed by a brief question and answer session.
-by Emily Lemancyzk '05
