📝 What is it?
The Affective Reactivity Index (ARI) looks at irritability and anger in children and adolescents.
It looks at three aspects of irritability: 1. What is the threshold for a child to get angry?, 2. How frequent does the child display angry feelings or behaviors?, and 3. How long do these episodes of angry feelings or behaviors last? It is more focused on the irritable mood than possible effects like hostility or aggression.
It is most often used to monitor a client's progress week over week. Most clinicians use it weekly.
It contains 7 quick questions with a 3-point Likert scale ("Not true" to "Certainly true") and typically takes 1-2 minutes to complete.
📸 Sample screenshot:
What is anger?
Anger is a common human emotion. It is a normal response to difficult situations or when a person feels wronged.
Anger can be a good or bad thing. It can be good in that it pushes the person to express something or to search for a solution. But it can also be bad if it is excessive or begins to affect a person's everyday life or relationships.
There are many different experiences and behaviors associated with anger: physical characteristics like higher blood pressure or increased muscle tension, behaviors like raised voices or clenched fists, and internal sensations like resentment or depression.
Therapy can be helpful for dealing with anger. There are also many coping strategies such as breathing, meditation, and working out.
It can be associated with/a symptom of many different mental health conditions.
Anger in children and adolescents
Anger may be more commonly seen in children and adolescents because they are still developing and sometimes are unable to handle overwhelming emotions like anger as well as adults can. If children aren't equipped with tools to regulate their emotions and articulate them, their internal struggle may come out as anger.
Anger may be an outward symptom of other underlying concerns like depression, anxiety, trauma, ADHD, autism, or learning problems.
Children may have tantrums or meltdowns, be defiant, act out, or get in trouble at school.
Serious cases of anger may be a sign of DSM-5 diagnoses such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Conduct Disorder (CD) or Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
Scoring:
The ARI contains 7 questions scored on a 3-point Likert scale with 0 for "Not true," 1 for "Somewhat true," and 2 for "Certainly true."
The final question asks about overall irritability ("Overall irritability causes me problems") and is not included in the scoring. Scores from the first six questions are summed and total scores range from 0 to 12. Higher scores are indicative of more severe anger/irritability symptoms.
When administered on Blueprint, the sum score is placed into a quartile ("low", "mild", "moderate", and "high") for easier interpretation of raw scores; however this scoring and interpretation model is for practical use, iClears not validated as formal clinical cut-off scores, and should not be used to determine diagnosis eligibility.
ℹ️ Summary:
Focus Area: Irritability
Overview: The Affective Reactivity Index (ARI) looks at irritability in children. It looks at three aspects of irritability: 1. What is the threshold for a child to get angry?, 2. How frequent does the child display angry feelings or behaviors?, and 3. How long do these episodes of angry feelings or behaviors last? It is more focused on the irritable mood than possible effects like hostility or aggression. There is a parent-report and child-report. The version in Blueprint is intended for child-report.
Total number of items: 7
Standardized cadence: Weekly
Estimated completion time: 2-4 minutes
Supported subscales: None
Age range: Children and adolescents
Scoring and interpretation: See above
Additional information: