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RCADS-25: the Child Anxiety and Depression Scale, Explained
Twenty-five questions covering worry, panic, separation, social fear, and low mood, with matching child and caregiver versions. Here is what it measures, and how a clinician reads its two scores.
- 25 items
- Ages 8-18
- Child and caregiver versions
Available through care
This questionnaire is published by the RCADS authors at UCLA, and we don't publish it here. If it is relevant to your child's care, your Emora clinician may use it as part of their assessment.
Find care for your childPublic version of the questionnaire is available from the publisher.
What a RCADS-25 score can and cannot tell you
The RCADS-25 is a 25-item anxiety and depression questionnaire for children and teens, with parent and child versions.
Clinicians read the anxiety and depression subscales against age norms and alongside an interview.
Wherever it is used, a rating scale is a screen, not an assessment. A clinician reads it alongside a history, an interview, and often a second rater such as a teacher or the other parent before drawing any conclusion.
About the RCADS-25
The RCADS-25 is the 25-question short form of the Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale, developed by Bruce Chorpita and colleagues. It gives two scores rather than one. A total anxiety score comes from the questions about worry, panic, separation, and social fear. A depression score comes from the questions about mood, energy, and enjoyment. Your child answers one version and you answer the other, which is why clinicians often send both.
Raw totals are not the finished result. RCADS scores are converted into T-scores that account for grade and gender, because what counts as a lot of worry is different for an eight-year-old and a sixteen-year-old. A clinician reads the anxiety and depression scores separately, next to an interview and your version of the form. Children and parents often see the same feelings very differently.
Your clinician sends the RCADS-25 to you as part of care, usually near the start of treatment and again as it goes on, so you can both see the two scores move. We do not offer it as a public screener on this page. The RCADS is publicly available, free of cost, from the RCADS site at UCLA, which publishes the official questionnaires, scoring guidance, and manuals.
How the RCADS-25 is scored
The RCADS-25 gives two results rather than one: an anxiety score and a depression score. The raw sums are then converted into T-scores, using tables that account for your child’s grade and gender.
That conversion is the whole point. What counts as a lot of worry is different for an eight-year-old and a sixteen-year-old, so the raw sum on its own says very little. The child and caregiver versions are scored the same way and are meant to be compared. Where the two disagree, that gap is useful information.
A screener is not a diagnosis. Cutoffs are set to catch more than they miss, so a high score is a reason to talk to a clinician, not an answer.
Common questions
No. Your clinician sends the RCADS-25 to you as part of care. The official questionnaire is publicly available, free of cost, at rcads.ucla.edu.
Two things at once: symptoms of anxiety (worry, panic, separation fear, social fear) and symptoms of depression (low mood, low energy, loss of enjoyment). Anxiety and low mood frequently travel together in children and teens, and a measure that reports them separately shows which one is heavier.
Items are rated from never to always. The anxiety items and the depression items are summed separately, then converted to T-scores normed by grade and gender. Those norms are why a raw total on its own says little.
There are matching versions for both, and clinicians often use them together. Caregivers see behavior; children know what they feel. Where the two disagree, the disagreement itself is useful information for the clinician.
Your clinician sends it to you and goes through the results with you, usually at the start of treatment and again as care continues. That way you can both see what has changed rather than guess at it. A screener is still not a diagnosis on its own.
References
- 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. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(99)00130-8 Official source
- Ebesutani, C., Reise, S. P., Chorpita, B. F., Ale, C., Regan, J., Young, J., Higa-McMillan, C., & Weisz, J. R. (2012). The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-Short Version: Scale reduction via exploratory bifactor modeling of the broad anxiety factor. Psychological Assessment, 24(4), 833-845. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027283
Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS), Bruce F. Chorpita and colleagues.
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