title: Depressed mothers as informants about their children: a critical review of the evidence for distortion.
abstract: The claim that depressed mothers have distorted, inflated, perceptions of their children's problems has been made with increasing frequency in recent years. This review explicates the significance of the depression-->distortion controversy, introduces a set of standards for evaluating distortion claims, and uses these standards to evaluate the key characteristics of 22 studies that have published data directly relevant to the distortion question. None of the studies that claimed evidence for a depression-->distortion influence on mothers' ratings of their children met the necessary and sufficient criteria for establishing distortion. This review challenges the empirical foundation for the widely held assumption that depressed mothers have distorted perceptions of their children's problems. Issues that will require reckoning in future efforts to explore the depression-->distortion question are considered.
authors.affiliation: Child and Adolescent Disorders Research Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, Maryland 20857.
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Richters
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D010552:Personality Assessment