Abstract
Clinicians rely on parent and adolescent reports when assessing and diagnosing adolescent depression. Discrepancy between reports is relatively common on measures that gather information from multiple informants (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005). The goal of this study was to investigate whether informant discrepancies on a structured clinical interview for adolescent depression can be used to predict treatment outcomes. Archival data from the Treatment for Adolescents With Depression Study was used (March et al., 2004). Parent-adolescent informant discrepancies for 231 participants were calculated, and regression models were used to determine the relationship between discrepancy and treatment outcomes. Total score discrepancy could not be used to predict treatment outcome. Discrepancies on reports of most individual depression symptoms were also not significant. Morbid Ideation was a significant predictor when a parent reported higher levels of ideation than their adolescent child, indicating that patients may have poorer treatment outcomes when there is more disagreement on this symptom. Limitations of this study and implications for future research are discussed.