NU674 Unit 6 DQ 1: assessing ADHD and depression
After reading the Daviss and Bond article on comorbid ADHD and depression, discuss the distinct considerations that apply to the psychiatric interview and assessment of children, and define how you would progress with a comprehensive assessment of a child with suspected ADHD, depression, or both.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 14, 2026
The child is not the only informant
What makes a child psychiatric interview distinct is that the clinician is working with several informants and none of them is complete. The child's own account is limited by developmental vocabulary for internal states and by the fact that they did not choose to attend; parents report observable behaviour and carry their own distress into the history; teachers see the child in the setting where attention and function are most tested but know nothing of home. Cross-informant disagreement is the normal case, not a problem to be resolved by picking the most credible witness. Add the practical differences — you need developmentally appropriate language, play or drawing for younger children, separate time with the adolescent alone, an explicit conversation about confidentiality and its limits, attention to the family system, and a mandated-reporting duty that shapes what you ask and what you must do with the answer.
The second question asks you to define a progression, so give a staged one rather than a list of components. Begin with a broad screen and a full developmental, medical, family and school history, and collect standardised rating scales from more than one informant, since ADHD criteria require impairment across settings. Rule out the medical and situational mimics before diagnosing either condition — sleep disorder, hearing or vision impairment, thyroid dysfunction, learning disability, substance use, trauma and bereavement all produce inattention or low mood. Then work the overlap the article is about: inattention is a symptom of depression as well as a criterion for ADHD, so the timeline decides. Longstanding inattention present since early childhood across settings points at ADHD; inattention that appeared with a mood change points at depression; both patterns together mean both diagnoses, which is common. Close with safety assessment and with what you would do about sequencing treatment, since treating one condition affects the other.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Identify what makes a child psychiatric interview structurally different from an adult one.
- 02Handle cross-informant disagreement as expected rather than as error.
- 03Design a staged assessment that rules out mimics before diagnosing.
- 04Use symptom timeline to disentangle ADHD from depression when both are possible.
- 05Incorporate confidentiality, safeguarding and safety assessment into the plan.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
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Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01The distinct considerations in interviewing and assessing children.
- 02The role of multiple informants and how disagreement is handled.
- 03A defined progression for a comprehensive assessment.
- 04The medical and situational conditions ruled out along the way.
- 05How you would distinguish ADHD, depression, or both.
- 06A minimum of two scholarly articles cited in APA format.
Considerations first, then a staged assessment
Why a child interview is different
Set out developmental, family and consent differences up front.
Multiple informants
Explain what child, parent and teacher each contribute and where they diverge.
Confidentiality and safeguarding
Set out what is promised, what cannot be, and the reporting duty.
Stage one: history and screening
Developmental, medical, family and school history plus rating scales.
Stage two: ruling out mimics
Exclude sleep, sensory, endocrine, learning, substance and trauma explanations.
Stage three: separating ADHD from depression
Use onset and timeline, then assess safety and treatment sequencing.
Sources for both conditions and their overlap
Recommended databases
- The assigned Daviss and Bond article in Psychiatric Times
- StatPearls via NCBI Bookshelf
- PubMed
- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry practice parameters
- CINAHL
Search sequence
- 1.Read the assigned article first and note its assessment recommendations.
- 2.Confirm the ADHD criterion requiring impairment in more than one setting.
- 3.List the medical and situational mimics of inattention and of low mood.
- 4.Find evidence on cross-informant agreement in child assessment.
- 5.Note guidance on treatment sequencing when both conditions are present.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Diagnostic criteria including the cross-setting impairment requirement that shapes the assessment.
- 02
Major Depressive Disorder
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
The depression criteria whose inattention overlaps with ADHD, which is what the timeline resolves.
- 03
Bipolar Disorder
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
A third possibility the assessment has to be able to exclude before treating.
- 04
Informed Consent
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Assent, parental consent and confidentiality limits with a minor patient.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Describing an adult interview with children mentioned.
- Treating informant disagreement as an obstacle rather than as data.
- Listing assessment components with no order or logic.
- Diagnosing without excluding sleep, hearing, learning and trauma explanations.
- Ignoring the comorbidity the assigned article is specifically about.
- Omitting confidentiality limits and safeguarding duties.
Submission checklist
- Multiple informants are addressed, including how they disagree.
- Developmental adaptations to the interview are named.
- Confidentiality and its limits are discussed.
- The assessment progression is staged and ordered.
- Mimics are ruled out before diagnosis is discussed.
- The ADHD/depression overlap is resolved by timeline or another stated criterion.
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