The Child and Youth Mental Health (ChYMH) assessment system was developed by interRAI (i.e., an international collective of researchers and clinicians from over thirty countries) in response to the unprecedented need for a coordinated approach to delivery of children’s mental health care. Many interRAI instruments are used across Canada and internationally, but the ChYMH represents the first assessment specifically for children and youth. In the present paper, a short overview of the development process of the ChYMH is provided, and then the psychometric properties of several embedded scales on the ChYMH are examined. Participants included 1297 children and youth and their families who completed the ChYMH after being referred to mental health agencies within Ontario, Canada. In addition, smaller subsets of participants (N = 48–53) completed additional criterion measures, including the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS), the Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale (CAFAS), the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and the Brief Child and Family Phone Interview (BCFPI). Results demonstrated that the ChYMH subscales had strong internal-consistency (Cronbach’s higher than .70), and correlated well with the criterion measures. Findings support the clinical utility of the ChYMH for use among clinically referred children and youth. Implications for children’s mental health assessment and practice are discussed.

Children’s mental health care plays a vital role in many social, health care, and education systems, but there is evidence that appropriate targeting strategies are needed to allocate limited mental health care resources effectively. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a methodology for identifying children who require access to more intense facility-based or community resources. Ontario data based on the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health instruments were analysed to identify predictors of service complexity in children’s mental health. The Resource Intensity for Children and Youth (RIChY) algorithm was a good predictor of service complexity in the derivation sample. The algorithm was validated with additional data from 61 agencies. The RIChY algorithm provides a psychometrically sound decision-support tool that may be used to inform the choices related to allocation of children’s mental health resources and prioritisation of clients needing community- and facility-based resources.

This study demonstrates the use of the interRAI assessment instruments to examine mental health symptoms in children and adults within residential and in-patient care settings. Regardless of service setting, children exhibited more harm to self and others than adults. Children in adult in-patient beds were more likely to exhibit suicide and self-harm and less likely to exhibit harm to others compared to children in child-specific service settings. Implications related to service system improvements are discussed.

Both Internet and offline video gaming have become a normal aspect of child development, with estimates of children playing video games ranging from 90% to 97%. Research on problematic video gaming (PVG) has grown substantially in the last decade. Much of that research has focused on community samples, while research on clinically referred children and youth is lacking. The present study includes 5820 clinically referred children and youth across 44 mental health agencies, assessed using the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health Assessment. Logistic regression analyses revealed that older age, male sex, extreme shyness, internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and poor relational strengths are all significant predictors of problematic video gaming (PVG). Further analyses suggested that, out of the internalizing symptoms, anhedonia was predictive of PVG in both males and females, but depressive symptoms and anxiety were not predictive of PVG when controlling for other variables in the model. Moreover, proactive aggression and extreme shyness were predictive of PVG in males, but not in females. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Background: With 10 to 20% of Canadian children suffering with mental illness, the importance of early identification and accurate assessment systems is clear. Unfortunately, many do not receive the mental health treatment necessary and wait-times for assessment can span up to a year. In response, the interRAI suite of assessments were designed to comprehensively assess early signs of mental health impairments in children from birth to 18 years.Methods: This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Anxiety Scale and addresses the identification of anxiety within children diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD); a commonly underrepresented sample in mental health psychometric studies. Data was collected from children aged 4–18 years in three different samples.Results: Results indicated reliable internal consistency and factor structure, as well as moderate-to-strong convergent validity.Conclusions: We conclude that the Anxiety Scale exhibits psychometric qualities which demonstrate its clinical utility for use within a child sample, as well as in children with IDD. The findings provide support to a larger body of research which show consistent psychometric rigour of the interRAI measures.