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Objective: The pediatric version of the Short Form of the Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire (PQ-LES-Q) was developed to aid in the assessment of an important aspect of life experience in children and adolescents. Method: The reliability and validity of the PQ-LES-Q was tested using data from a sample of 376 outpatient children (6–11 years old) and adolescents (12–17 years old) with major depressive disorder. Results: The internal consistency coefficients at screening, baseline, and endpoint were high (0.87, 0.90, 0.89, respectively) as was the 1-week test-retest intraclass correlation coefficient of reliability (0.78). The correlations of the PQ-LES-Q total score with concurrent measures of severity of illness were in the moderate range (e.g., Global Clinical Impression of Severity, -0.40; Children's Global Assessment Scale, 0.36; Children's Depression Rating Scale total score, -0.45), as were the correlations with measures of change between baseline and endpoint (e.g., Clinical Global Impression of Severity, -0.34; Children's Global Assessment Scale, 0.33; Children's Depression Rating Scale total score, -0.45). Conclusions: These findings support the use of the PQ-LES-Q as an additional measure of current clinical status and outcome because it taps dimensions that are not covered by the commonly used global severity of illness or symptomatic measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore time to first response and time to first persistent response of sertraline versus placebo and compare these parameters between children (6-11 years old, n = 177) and adolescents (12-17 years old, n = 199) with major depressive disorder.Method: A 10-week placebo-controlled treatment was followed by a 24-week open-label sertraline treatment. The double-blind studies were not powered to detect efficacy differences between age groups. A post hoc analysis explored time to first response and first persistent response using the Children's Depression Rating Scale-Revised and Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement predefined criteria.Results: There were no statistically significant differences in time to first response or first persistent response between sertraline and placebo in children, except for time to first response on Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement. Sertraline had a significantly faster time to first persistent response in adolescents compared to placebo. Within treatment groups, children had a significantly faster time to first response than adolescents, whether treated with placebo or sertraline, but not on time to first persistent response. Both age groups showed similar improvement over 34 weeks of treatment.Conclusion: In the double-blind studies, children and adolescents had different patterns of response with sertraline vs. placebo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]