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When a parent walks in worried that their 9-year-old “won’t go to school” or their 14-year-old “barely talks anymore,” the RCADS gives you a structured way to separate what’s going on. Forty-seven short statements rated by the parent, scored across the six DSM-IV anxiety and depression disorders that show up most often in children.

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What it measures

Six subscales, all parent-rated, covering the child’s behaviour as the parent observes it:
  • Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD)
  • Social Phobia (SP)
  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
  • Panic Disorder (PD)
  • Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)
This is the dominant comprehensive pediatric anxiety and depression measure used in clinical practice — broad enough to surface comorbidity, specific enough to point at where to start.

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When to use it

  • Intake when the presenting concern is anxiety, depression, or “something’s off” and you have a parent informant available
  • After 8-12 sessions to track subscale-level change
  • To prepare for a parent-clinician conversation about which symptom cluster is dominating — useful when the parent has a different read than the child

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How parents fill it out

About 10 minutes. Plain wording — “My child worries about things”, “Nothing is much fun for my child anymore”. Comfortable for parents without a clinical background.

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How Rivet scores it

Each item rated 0-3 (Never / Sometimes / Often / Always).

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Six subscales

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Totals

  • Total Anxiety — sum of the five anxiety subscales
  • Total Depression — the MDD subscale (10 items, range 0-30)

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Raw scores vs T-scores

The canonical RCADS interpretation uses T-scores converted from raw sums by age and sex (T ≥65 = borderline clinical, T ≥70 = clinical). The conversion lives in age/sex stratified tables. Rivet surfaces the raw-sum subscales. For decisions that hinge on the canonical T-score (e.g. diagnostic determinations, research reporting), run the raw scores through the conversion tool at rcads.ucla.edu. The raw subscales are useful for tracking direction of change across sessions even without the T-score wrapper.
Item 37 (“My child thinks about death”) is flagged as sensitive and surfaces its own signal. Any endorsement above “Never” warrants clinical follow-up regardless of how the totals land. To keep this signal visible, Rivet reports item 37 as a separate death-thoughts subscale rather than rolling it into a GAD total — so the GAD subscale here scores 5 items instead of the canonical 6, and Total Anxiety sums 36 items instead of 37. If you need the canonical GAD or Total Anxiety T-score for a report, sum item 37 back in by hand.

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Which variant Rivet uses

Rivet uses the parent-report 6-18 variant. The self-report (child) variant and the 25-item RCADS-25 short form aren’t in the library.

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RCADS vs SDQ

The RCADS goes deep on anxiety and depression; the SDQ goes wide on everything. Six subscales — separation anxiety, social phobia, generalized anxiety, panic, OCD, and depression — is what makes the RCADS worth its forty-seven items: it distinguishes between anxiety presentations rather than reporting one anxiety number. If you already know mood or anxiety is the question, this is the instrument. If you don’t, the SDQ’s twenty-five items cover conduct, hyperactivity and peer relationships as well, and will catch difficulties the RCADS isn’t looking for. They also come from different people. This is the parent-report form for ages 6–18; the SDQ here is the young person’s own report for ages 11–17. Running both, where age allows, gives you two accounts of the same child — and where they disagree, that is usually worth a conversation rather than an average.

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Is it free to use?

Yes. Free clinical use, per rcads.ucla.edu.

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Citation

Chorpita, B. F., Yim, L., Moffitt, C., Umemoto, L. A., & Francis, S. E. (2000). Assessment of symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety and depression in children: a revised child anxiety and depression scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38(8), 835-855. Free clinical use per rcads.ucla.edu.

SDQ (self-report 11-17)

Briefer adolescent screen for a wide-angle read before going deep with the RCADS.

PHQ-A

Direct adolescent self-report on depression — pairs well with the parent-rated RCADS MDD subscale.

Risk flagging

How item 37 surfaces in the conversation.