How do professionals assess a child’s emotional state?

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Direct methods used by professionals for assessing child emotional state include interviews with children and self-report scales, such as the Children's Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children, and the Youth Self-Report form of the Child Behavior Checklist. But children with emotional disturbance may not be able to effectively communicate their emotions. Self-report scales can be easy to administer and very useful in the evaluation of adolescents.

Indirect methods for assessing child and youth emotional state include projective tests such as drawings, sentence completion tests, storytelling in response to pictures, and interpretation of inkblot responses. These latter methods require substantial clinical training and experience for accurate administration and interpretation.