Psychopathological evaluation of children and adolescents in 4 child and adolescent psychiatry referral groups--a multicenter study

Goal of the multicenter study with the Clinical Assessment Scale of Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (CASCAP) in a sample of N = 5027 patients from the inpatient and outpatient clinics of psychiatry and psychotherapy of childhood and adolescence of the universities of Berlin (Virchow Clinic), Frankfurt, Cologne and Zurich is the comparison of the clinical populations of these institutions with respect to single symptoms, to symptom scales and to the supreme level of aggregation, the clinical diagnoses according to ICD 10. On the level of diagnoses similar distributions can be found in the centers, but there are also significant differences between the centers. This differences can be found again also on the level of symptom scales and single symptoms, though the deviations are comparatively low.