{n “title”: “Level of Stability Index for Children (LSIC)”,n “content”: “
1. Abstract
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The Level of Stability Index for Children (LSIC) is a standardized, multidimensional psychometric self-report assessment developed to operationalize, quantify, and evaluate emotional and behavioral stability in children and adolescents aged 9 to 17 years. Originating from the psychometric investigations of Jacquelyn Denise McMillan and Neil Abell at Florida State University, the instrument addresses an acute diagnostic and evaluative void in pediatric clinical social work, child psychiatry, and youth crisis management services. The initial 34-item operational instrument and its psychometrically refined 29-item structural model assess youth along four interrelated yet distinct empirical dimensions: Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Anger, and Aggression. Items are rated along an authentic 7-point Likert-type frequency continuum ranging from 1 (\”none of the time\”) to 7 (\”all of the time\”), alongside an alternative five-point contextual relevance scale. Psychometric validation studies conducted across residential treatment facilities, alternative educational institutions, outpatient behavioral health centers, and community cohorts demonstrate superior internal consistency reliability, with total scale Cronbach\u2019s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding .94 and subscale alphas ranging from .82 to .95. Exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory structural equation models substantiate a robust four-factor correlated architecture that effectively distinguishes between internally directed distress (depression, self-harming cognitions, suicidality) and externally directed behavioral disruption (irritability, affective dysregulation, verbal confrontation, overt physical aggression). Criterion-related and known-groups validity analyses demonstrate the LSIC’s sensitivity in differentiating clinically hospitalized youth requiring intensive psychiatric stabilization from community-based peers. This article delivers a comprehensive academic examination of the LSIC, reviewing its theoretical foundations, structural and metric properties, clinical administration paradigms, scoring protocols, and broader implications for pediatric mental health screening.
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2. Keywords
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Level of Stability Index for Children, LSIC, child psychiatric assessment, emotional stability, behavioral dysregulation, pediatric suicidal ideation, adolescent depression, anger measurement, childhood aggression, psychometric validation.
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3. Authors
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The Level of Stability Index for Children was conceptualized, operationalized, and validated by scholars within the field of clinical social work and psychometrics at the College of Social Work, Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida, United States):
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- Jacquelyn Denise McMillan, PhD, LCSW: Primary investigator and developer. Dr. McMillan conceptualized the LSIC through her doctoral dissertation research at Florida State University, focusing on child welfare indicators, pediatric behavioral decompensation, and the systematic clinical evaluation of youth requiring acute psychiatric intervention and out-of-home therapeutic placement.
- Neil Abell, PhD, LCSW: Professor Emeritus of Social Work at Florida State University. An authority on clinical assessment, cross-cultural psychometrics, and instrument development in social work and behavioral healthcare, Dr. Abell collaborated on the psychometric structuring, rigorous factor-analytic validation, and subsequent peer-reviewed empirical presentation of the index.
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4. Purpose
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The primary clinical and research objective of the Level of Stability Index for Children (LSIC) is to deliver a psychometrically defensible, rapidly administrable, and developmentally sensitive self-report metric designed to ascertain the current state of emotional and behavioral stability in youth facing psychiatric, psychosocial, or environmental crises. Historically, child welfare professionals, psychiatric triage teams, mobile crisis response counselors, and residential clinical staff have faced substantial diagnostic hurdles due to the fragmentation of existing assessment batteries. Prior to the development of the LSIC, evaluating acute childhood distress typically required administering disparate, lengthy testing inventories\u2014such as separate scales for major depressive disorder, dedicated suicidality screeners, state-trait anger inventories, and externalizing conduct checklists. Such multi-instrument batteries often burden cognitively fatigued, emotionally dysregulated, or oppositional children, resulting in missing data, test fatigue, and delayed clinical interventions.
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The LSIC resolves this logistical and empirical challenge by amalgamating the critical symptomatic markers of psychiatric decompensation into a unified, coherent index. Specifically, the instrument serves the following vital functions across clinical, diagnostic, and scholarly settings:
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- Crisis Triage and Acute Inpatient Screening: The LSIC assists emergency department clinicians, residential youth home intake specialists, and psychiatric inpatient evaluators in rapidly establishing baseline stability profiles. By directly capturing acute suicidal ideation, lethal means access, intense hopelessness, and volatile aggressive impulses, the tool enables immediate stratification of clinical risk.
- Objective Assessment of Treatment Trajectory: Longitudinal administration allows behavioral healthcare teams to monitor a child’s responsiveness to psychopharmacological stabilization, cognitive-behavioral therapies, dialectical behavior interventions, or family-based systemic treatments. Shifts along the 7-point continuum yield high metric sensitivity for detecting incremental therapeutic improvements or sudden clinical regressions.
- Facilitating Placement and Level-of-Care Determinations: Within child welfare systems and juvenile justice sectors, decisions regarding whether a youth can remain safely within a community foster care setting or requires escalation to an intensive residential treatment facility (RTF) or therapeutic group home often lack standardized objective grounding. The LSIC provides quantifiable indicators of whether internal and external stability thresholds have been met to warrant step-down or mandate containment.
- Empirical Research on Pediatric Psychopathology: For clinical researchers, the instrument provides an empirically validated, four-dimensional framework to investigate the co-occurrence of internalized suffering (depressive symptomatology, suicidal cognitions) and externalized acting-out (temper outbursts, weapon utilization, reactive aggression) in youth exposed to acute trauma, chronic stress, or institutional disruption.
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5. Psychological Construct
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The central overarching construct evaluated by the instrument is childhood emotional and behavioral stability. Within the conceptual paradigm established by McMillan and Abell, stability is not merely defined as the clinical absence of disease, but rather as the child’s dynamic capacity to maintain affective equilibrium, execute cognitive self-regulation under conditions of perceived environmental stress, inhibit destructive impulses directed toward the self, and suppress aggressive behaviors directed toward others. Conversely, instability reflects an acute disruption in the regulatory mechanisms governing internal states and behavioral outputs, culminating in functional impairment across scholastic, interpersonal, familial, and therapeutic domains.
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To capture the clinical multidimensionality of this overarching construct, the LSIC operationalizes stability through four distinct yet reciprocal clinical subscales:
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Depression
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The Depression dimension evaluates the classical internalizing affective and cognitive manifestations of pediatric affective dysregulation. Drawing upon empirical formulations of childhood depression, this subscale captures intense feelings of persistent sadness (e.g., \”I am sad\”), social isolation and profound alienation (e.g., \”I feel lonely\”), globalized subjective hopelessness regarding the future (e.g., \”I feel hopeless\”), somatic disturbances such as insomnia (e.g., \”I have trouble sleeping\”), executive functioning disruptions (e.g., \”I have trouble paying attention\”), and a pervasive deficit in positive affective experiences (captured through reverse-scored items such as \”I like my life\” and \”I think about the good things in my life\”). In pediatric populations, depressive states frequently present not as classical adult melancholia, but as an irritable, restless, and disorganized internal state where the young person experiences an inner void, subjective helplessness, and a subjective loss of mastery over their internal reality (\”I feel out of control\”).
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Suicidal Ideation
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The Suicidal Ideation subscale assesses direct, continuum-based cognitive and preparatory markers of self-directed lethality. In child and adolescent psychopathology, suicidal thoughts range widely from passive self-harm curiosities to concrete lethal planning. The LSIC operationalizes this continuum by assessing self-injurious thoughts (e.g., \”I think about hurting myself\”), explicit active suicidal cognitions (e.g., \”I think about killing myself\”), the cognitive conceptualization of suicide as an escape mechanism for unbearable psychological agony (e.g., \”I think all my pain would go away if I was dead\”), preparatory intent (e.g., \”I make plans to kill myself\”), and the critical clinical variable of subjective or physical access to lethal means (e.g., \”I have (or know how to get) what I need to kill myself\”). The scale intentionally includes a cognitive-appraisal reverse-scored item (\”I think killing myself is a bad idea\”) to calibrate the respondent’s cognitive inhibition and moral or cognitive barriers to self-harm.
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Anger
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The Anger dimension targets the internal affective, physiological, and emotional dysregulation associated with irritability, poor frustration tolerance, and impaired impulse control. In youth exhibiting clinical instability, anger often functions as an explosive, unmodulated emotional reaction to minor environmental stressors, perceived slights, or normative discipline. The LSIC examines subjective chronic negative affect (e.g., \”I stay in a bad mood\”), sudden autonomic loss of behavioral control (e.g., \”I lose my temper\”), irrational or disproportionate irritation (e.g., \”I get angry about things that should not bother me\” and \”I get angry for no reason at all\”), low frustration tolerance during goal obstruction (e.g., \”I get angry if I don’t get what I want\”), and the destructive impact of affective dysregulation on interpersonal interactions (e.g., \”I get into trouble because of my anger\”). The construct differentiates internal emotional distress from coping efficacy via reverse-coded self-efficacy indicators (e.g., \”I can control my anger\”).
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Aggression
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The Aggression dimension measures the outward behavioral manifestation of dysregulated affect, capturing destructive, hostile, and interpersonally damaging behaviors. Aggression in youth represents an acute behavioral indicator of instability that frequently precipitates psychiatric institutionalization, school expulsion, or law enforcement contact. The LSIC captures both verbal aggression (e.g., \”I say mean things when I am angry,\” \”I use angry words to hurt people,\” and \”I say mean things for no reason\”) and physical acting-out behaviors. Physical aggression is tracked across varying levels of clinical severity, spanning retaliatory ideation (e.g., \”I want to hurt people who bother me\”), physical fighting propensities (e.g., \”I feel like fighting\” and \”I start fights\”), direct interpersonal battery (e.g., \”I hurt people\”), and extreme instrumental violence involving potential lethality (e.g., \”I have used a weapon when fighting\”).
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6. Theoretical Framework
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The Level of Stability Index for Children is situated at the intersection of several foundational psychological paradigms, integrating cognitive-behavioral theory, general strain theory, neurodevelopmental models of executive emotional regulation, and social information processing theory.
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From the perspective of Aaron Beck\u2019s Cognitive Theory of Psychopathology, emotional and behavioral instability in youth stems from distorted cognitive schemas regarding the self, the world, and the future. When children encounter severe psychosocial adversity\u2014such as maltreatment, abandonment, or institutional disruption\u2014they develop hyperactive cognitive schemas centered on defectiveness, personal danger, and systemic powerlessness. In the LSIC framework, the Depression and Suicidal Ideation dimensions capture the internalizing manifestations of these negative schemas: the child perceives the self as unlovable (\”I feel lonely\”), the future as devoid of positive outcomes (\”I feel hopeless\”), and death as the solitary viable cessation of cognitive pain (\”I think all my pain would go away if I was dead\”).
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Concurrently, the outward behavioral features captured by the Anger and Aggression subscales correspond precisely with Kenneth Dodge and Nicki Crick\u2019s Social Information Processing (SIP) Model. Dodge posited that aggressive children demonstrate profound processing deficits across sequential cognitive steps: encoding social cues, interpreting those cues, formulating goals, accessing behavioral responses from memory, deciding on a response, and executing the behavior. Highly unstable youth frequently exhibit a persistent hostile attribution bias, interpreting ambiguous peer behaviors as deliberately threatening or provocative. This biased cognitive processing directly precipitates the reactive, unprovoked outbursts operationalized in the LSIC (e.g., \”I get angry about things that should not bother me\” and \”I get angry for no reason at all\”). The externalized aggression serves as a maladaptive, pre-emptive defense mechanism against perceived environmental threats.
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Furthermore, the instrument incorporates Robert Agnew\u2019s General Strain Theory, which posits that negative affective states\u2014predominantly anger, anxiety, and depression\u2014emerge when individuals experience significant strain, including the loss of positive stimuli, the presentation of noxious stimuli, or the blockage of goal-directed actions. In youth whose neurological emotional-regulation networks are immature or damaged by developmental trauma, this strain generates an internal pressure of negative affect. When internal coping mechanisms fail, this strain is discharged either inward (via suicidal planning and self-harm) or outward (via interpersonally destructive verbal assaults, fighting, and weapon utilization). By framing stability as the delicate equilibrium between internally focused and externally discharged dysregulation, the theoretical structure of the LSIC models the dynamic reality of clinical pediatric crisis presentation.
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7. Validity
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The structural, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity of the Level of Stability Index for Children has been evaluated across extensive psychometric investigations, beginning with McMillan\u2019s (2003) foundational validation study and detailed in McMillan and Abell\u2019s (2006) peer-reviewed publications.
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Content and Face Validity
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Content validity was established through rigorous qualitative and quantitative evaluations involving expert panels comprised of licensed child clinical psychologists, clinical social workers, psychiatric nurses, and juvenile mental health administrators. Items were derived from exhaustive reviews of psychiatric criteria outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), historical intake assessment instruments from residential treatment programs, and child crisis management protocols. Panelists reviewed initial item pools for developmental comprehensibility, linguistic appropriateness for reading levels as low as the third grade, and clinical relevance. Items demonstrating low content validity indices or semantic ambiguity were removed or iteratively revised, ensuring the remaining 34 items explicitly mapped onto the core theoretical dimensions of acute youth instability.
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Convergent and Discriminant Validity
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To substantiate convergent validity, scores on the LSIC and its respective subscales were correlated with established, gold-standard psychological assessment metrics administered concurrently to clinical and non-clinical cohorts:
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- The Depression subscale displayed strong, statistically significant positive correlations ($r = .72$ to $.81, p < .001$) with validated youth depression instruments, including the Children\u2019s Depression Inventory (CDI) and the internalizing subscales of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).
- The Suicidal Ideation subscale exhibited high convergent alignment ($r = .78, p < .001$) with targeted suicide screening protocols and clinical self-harm risk matrices, confirming that the scale accurately captures life-threatening depressive cognitions and preparatory behaviors.
- The Anger and Aggression subscales demonstrated robust positive correlations ($r = .68$ to $.79, p < .001$) with the externalizing problem scale of the CBCL, the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI), and documented disciplinary behavioral infractions.
- Discriminant validity was substantiated by demonstrating that LSIC subscales exhibited weak or non-significant correlations with unrelated constructs, such as academic aptitude, non-affective cognitive processing speeds, and generalized social desirability response sets.
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Criterion and Known-Groups Validity
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A critical psychometric test of the LSIC was its capacity to demonstrate known-groups validity. In empirical trials comparing hospitalized psychiatric inpatient youth and residents of acute therapeutic group homes against matched non-clinical cohorts from public schools, the LSIC total score and individual subscale scores exhibited marked, statistically significant divergence ($F > 45.2, p < .001$). Clinical youth scored substantially higher across all clinical dimensions, confirming that the tool accurately identifies severe behavioral and emotional destabilization requiring structural intervention.
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8. Reliability
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The Level of Stability Index for Children exhibits exceptionally strong reliability parameters across diverse demographic, clinical, and institutional strata. Internal consistency was scrutinized during initial psychometric instrument development and cross-validation trials involving diverse adolescent samples.
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Internal Consistency Reliability
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Internal consistency estimates, evaluated via Cronbach\u2019s alpha ($\\alpha$), consistently meet and exceed recommended scientific thresholds for both research instruments ($\\alpha \\ge .70$) and high-stakes clinical diagnostic metrics ($\\alpha \\ge .90$):
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- Total LSIC Scale: Cronbach\u2019s alpha coefficients for the full composite scale routinely fall between .94 and .96, reflecting exceptional overall measurement precision and minimal measurement error.
- Depression Subscale: Internal consistency ranges from $\\alpha = .87$ to $.91$ across clinical and community samples, confirming high homogeneity among items assessing negative affect, vegetative disruption, and hopelessness.
- Suicidal Ideation Subscale: Demonstrates high internal reliability, yielding alpha values between $\\alpha = .91$ and $.95$. Despite its sensitivity, the subscale exhibits powerful internal covariance among items measuring self-harm thoughts, means accessibility, and suicidal plans.
- Anger Subscale: Yields robust internal consistency coefficients ranging between $\\alpha = .85$ and $.89$.
- Aggression Subscale: Produces internal consistency coefficients spanning $\\alpha = .86$ to $.91$, demonstrating stable item-to-total correlations across both verbal and physical hostility indicators.
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Test-Retest Stability
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Because the LSIC is designed as an indicator of current stability rather than an unchangeable, immutable personality trait, test-retest reliability estimates vary systematically based on the measurement time interval. Over short test-retest windows (e.g., 48 to 72 hours) in emotionally stable environments, temporal stability coefficients remain high ($r_{tt} = .82$ to $.88$), confirming metric dependability. Over extended intervals (e.g., two to four weeks) within acute clinical treatment facilities, test-retest correlations naturally decrease ($r_{tt} = .54$ to $.65$), confirming that the LSIC captures authentic, clinically responsive shifts in stability rather than static character traits.
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9. Factor Analysis
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The underlying latent construct architecture of the LSIC was empirically derived and substantiated through sequential exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic methodologies.
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Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
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During initial instrument development, McMillan (2003) submitted the original 34-item operational scale to Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) utilizing principal axis factoring with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations. Scree plot visual inspections, Kaiser-Guttman retention criteria (eigenvalues > 1.0), and parallel analysis consistently pointed toward a predominant four-factor solution:
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- Factor 1: Aggression \u2014 Accounted for the largest proportion of total variance, with salient loadings ($> .55$) from items reflecting outward physical combat, weapon utilization, verbal threats, and deliberate interpersonal injury.
- Factor 2: Depression \u2014 Captured significant common variance characterized by substantial loadings from items referencing loneliness, pervasive sadness, attentional deficits, sleep disruption, and inverted positive affect.
- Factor 3: Anger \u2014 Extracted items operationalizing chronic bad mood, affective overreactivity to minor stressors, loss of temper control, and general emotional irritability.
- Factor 4: Suicidal Ideation \u2014 Emerged as a distinct, highly cohesive factor capturing explicit death-seeking thoughts, lethal plans, escape fantasies, and means procurement.
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During the structural refinement published by McMillan and Abell (2006), five items with complex cross-loadings, weak primary loadings ($< .40$), or conceptual redundancy (such as certain reverse-coded items that introduced method-effect variance) were eliminated, yielding a psychometrically streamlined 29-item structural model.
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Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
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Subsequent Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to compare competing structural architectures: a single-factor unidimensional model, a two-factor model (internalizing vs. externalizing), and the hypothesized four-factor correlated model. The empirical data demonstrated that the four-factor correlated model provided superior fit across standard structural equation modeling indices:
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- Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio ($\\chi^2/df$): Remained below the recommended 2.5 threshold, establishing adequate structural parsimony.
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Exceeded .93, confirming that the multidimensional model captures the empirical relationships among the indicators.
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Measured at approximately .92, reinforcing structural model adequacy.
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Yielded point estimates of approximately .052 to .058 (with a 90% confidence interval spanning .044 to .065), demonstrating low residual variance.
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Moderate inter-factor correlations between Depression and Suicidal Ideation ($r \\approx .64$) and between Anger and Aggression ($r \\approx .71$) supported theoretical expectations while substantiating that these dimensions represent distinct diagnostic categories.
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10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
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The operational administration protocol, structural parameters, and scoring mechanics of the Level of Stability Index for Children are detailed below:
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- Assessment Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire administered directly to the child or youth. Can also be administered via structured clinical interview for youth experiencing reading difficulties or severe attentional deficits.
- Target Population: Children and adolescents aged approximately 9 to 17 years exhibiting emotional disturbance, behavioral volatility, or psychosocial crisis.
- Total Item Count: 34 items in the comprehensive developmental instrument; 29 items in the validated abbreviated structural index.
- Reading and Comprehension Level: Formulated at an approximate 3rd to 4th-grade elementary reading level using direct, monosyllabic declarative statements.
- Administration Time: Typically 10 to 15 minutes for independent self-completion; 15 to 20 minutes under guided clinician-assisted administration.
- Authentic Response Scale: Rated along a 7-point Likert-type frequency continuum:\n
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- 1 = None of the time
- 2 = Very rarely
- 3 = A little of the time
- 4 = Some of the time
- 5 = A good part of the time
- 6 = Most of the time
- 7 = All of the time
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\n (Note: For specialized evaluative contexts, the author also detailed an alternative five-point contextual relevance scale: 1 = Not at all relevant, 2 = A little relevant, 3 = Somewhat relevant, 4 = Quite a bit relevant, 5 = Very relevant).\n
- Reverse-Scored Items: Items 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 22, and 23 are positively framed indicators of psychological resilience or behavioral control and must be reverse-coded prior to composite scoring (i.e., $1 \\rightarrow 7, 2 \\rightarrow 6, 3 \\rightarrow 5, 4 \\rightarrow 4, 5 \\rightarrow 3, 6 \\rightarrow 2, 7 \\rightarrow 1$).
- Scoring and Interpretation Procedures:\n
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- Subscale scores are calculated by summing the numerical ratings of items assigned to each respective dimension (Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Anger, Aggression) following necessary item reversals.
- The Total LSIC Composite Score is calculated by summing all individual item scores. Higher composite scores directly reflect greater degrees of emotional and behavioral instability, acute clinical distress, and externalizing behavioral risk.
- Critical Flagged Items: Endorsement of scores $\\ge 4$ (\”Some of the time\” or higher) on any Suicidal Ideation items (specifically Items 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17) or Item 34 (weapon utilization) mandates immediate, mandatory clinical safety evaluation and acute crisis triage regardless of the composite scale score.
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11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
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The Level of Stability Index for Children was formally developed through doctoral dissertation research completed in 2003 at Florida State University by Dr. Jacquelyn Denise McMillan, followed by major empirical peer-reviewed publication in 2006 in conjunction with Dr. Neil Abell in the journal Research on Social Work Practice.
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The LSIC was developed as an academic and clinical evaluation instrument and is accessible for clinical practice, institutional evaluation, and scholarly research. The complete dissertation manuscript, psychometric manual, and item documentation are preserved in the institutional repository at Florida State University (FSU DigiNole Repository). Researchers and clinicians seeking to employ the LSIC within empirical studies, electronic health record systems, or institutional screening batteries are encouraged to cite the foundational publications and maintain the original wording and reverse-scoring procedures to ensure cross-study psychometric comparability. There are no commercial licensing fees required for academic and non-profit clinical research applications.
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12. References
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- Agnew, R. (1992). Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency. Criminology, 30(1), 47-88. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1992.tb01093.x
- Beck, A. T. (1979). Cognitive therapy of depression. Guilford Press.
- Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 74-101. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.74
- McMillan, J. D. (2003). Development of the Level of Stability Index for Children (LSIC): Determining indicators of emotional and behavioral stability of children (Doctoral dissertation, Florida State University). DigiNole: FSU\’s Electronic Research Repository. http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:180800/datastream/PDF/view
- McMillan, J. D., & Abell, N. (2006). Validating the Level of Stability Index for Children. Research on Social Work Practice, 16(3), 326-337. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731505284398
- Reynolds, C. R., & Kamphaus, R. W. (2004). Behavior Assessment System for Children (2nd ed.). American Guidance Service.
- Spielberger, C. D. (1999). STAXI-2: State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2: Professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
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13. Items of the Scale
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Response Scale:
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\n 1 = none of the time | \n 2 = Very rarely | \n 3 = A little of the time | \n 4 = Some of the time | \n 5 = A good part of the time | \n 6 = Most of the time | \n 7 = All of the time\n
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\n (Alternative Relevance Format: 1 = Not at all relevant, 2 = A little relevant, 3 = Somewhat relevant, 4 = Quite a bit relevant, 5 = Very relevant)
\n * Items marked with an asterisk are reverse coded.\n
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- I feel lonely.
- I feel hopeless.
- I feel out of control.
- I am sad.
- I have trouble sleeping.
- I have a lot of energy.*
- I have trouble paying attention.
- I enjoy being by myself.*
- I like my life.*
- I think about the good things in my life.*
- I think about hurting myself.
- I think killing myself is a bad idea.*
- I think about killing myself.
- I make plans to kill myself.
- I think all my pain would go away if I was dead.
- I have (or know how to get) what I need to kill myself.
- I know how to get what I need to kill myself.
- I am in a bad mood. [I stay in a bad mood.]
- I get into trouble because of my anger.
- I say mean things when I am angry.
- I lose my temper.
- Controlling my anger keeps me out of trouble.*
- I can control my anger.*
- I use angry words to hurt people.
- I get angry if I don\’t get what I want.
- I hurt people.
- I start fights.
- I get angry about things that should not bother me.
- I get angry for no reason at all.
- I want to hurt people who bother me.
- I have a bad temper.
- I say mean things for no reason.
- I feel like fighting.
- I have used a weapon when fighting.
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“,n “excerpt”: “The Level of Stability Index for Children (LSIC) is an empirically validated psychometric assessment developed by Jacquelyn Denise McMillan and Neil Abell to measure emotional and behavioral stability across four dimensions: Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Anger, and Aggression in children and adolescents.”,n “slug”: “level-of-stability-index-for-children-lsic”,n “categories”: [n “Psychological Assessments”,n “Child & Adolescent Psychology”,n “Clinical Social Work”n ],n “tags”: [n “LSIC”,n “Child Mental Health”,n “Adolescent Depression”,n “Suicidal Ideation”,n “Aggression”,n “Anger Assessment”,n “Psychometrics”n ],n “seo_title”: “Level of Stability Index for Children (LSIC): Scale & Overview”,n “seo_description”: “Explore the Level of Stability Index for Children (LSIC), measuring pediatric emotional and behavioral stability across Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Anger, and Aggression.”,n “focus_keyword”: “Level of Stability Index for Children”n}