The Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS), developed and popularised by Robert Young and Vincent E Ziegler, is an eleven-item
multiple choice
Multiple choice (MC), objective response or MCQ (for multiple choice question) is a form of an objective assessment in which respondents are asked to select only the correct answer from the choices offered as a list. The multiple choice format i ...
diagnostic
Diagnosis (: diagnoses) is the identification of the nature and cause of a certain phenomenon. Diagnosis is used in a lot of different academic discipline, disciplines, with variations in the use of logic, analytics, and experience, to determine " ...
questionnaire which
psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...
s use to measure the presence and severity of
mania
Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a Psychiatry, psychiatric Abnormality (behavior), behavioral syndrome defined as a state of Abnormality (behavior), abnormally elevated arousal, affect (psychology), affect, and energy level. During a mani ...
and associated symptoms.
[ The scale was originally developed for use in the evaluation of adult patients with ]bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder (BD), previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of Depression (mood), depression and periods of abnormally elevated Mood (psychology), mood that each last from days to weeks, and in ...
, but has since been adapted for use in pediatric
Pediatrics (American English) also spelled paediatrics (British English), is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, pediatrics covers many of their youth ...
patients. The scale is widely used by clinicians and researchers in the diagnosis, evaluation, and quantification of manic symptomology. It has become the most widely used outcome measure in clinical trials for bipolar disorders, and it is recognized by many regulatory agencies as an acceptable outcome measure despite its age.
A similar scale was later developed to allow clinicians to interview parents about their children's symptoms, in order to ascertain a better diagnosis of mania in children. This parent version (P-YMRS) can be completed by a parent or a teacher to determine whether a child should receive further evaluation from a psychologist or psychiatrist.[ Clinical studies have demonstrated the reliability and validity of the parent version of the scale, which has been found to provide "clinically meaningful information about mood disorders in youth." The P-YMRS does succeed in identifying most cases of childhood bipolar disorder, but it has an extremely high false positive rate.][
]
See also
* Diagnostic classification and rating scales used in psychiatry
References
External links
Online version of P-YMRS
*
*
EffectiveChildTherapy.Org information on bipolar disorders
Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
{{Psychology
Bipolar disorder
Depression (mood)
Mental disorders screening and assessment tools
Mood disorders
Screening and assessment tools in child and adolescent psychiatry
Mania screening and assessment tools
Treatment of bipolar disorder