Screening for psychiatric symptoms: PAS-ADD Checklist norms for adults with intellectual disabilities.
The PAS-ADD Checklist gives BCBAs solid norms for adults with ID—expect one in five to screen positive and always follow up with a full assessment.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave the PAS-ADD Checklist to the adults with intellectual disability.
They came from day centers, group homes, and family homes across England.
The goal was to set normal cut-off scores so BCBAs can tell typical from at-risk clients.
What they found
About 20 out of every the adults scored above the cut-off.
This means one in five may have a treatable mental-health problem.
The checklist caught most true cases, but it also flagged some false alarms.
How this fits with other research
Bachman et al. (1988) did the same job earlier with the PIMRA. Their tool also worked, but the PAS-ADD now gives fresher norms and clearer cut-offs.
Horovitz et al. (2011) followed adults for a year and found symptom levels stayed steady. This backs the idea that a single PAS-ADD screen gives a reliable snapshot.
Embregts (2000) tested the CBCL in youth with mild ID and found shaky reliability. That warns us: not every checklist works well in ID samples, so the PAS-ADD’s decent marks matter.
Mahé et al. (2025) showed that adults with ID who screen positive often end up on multiple meds. Early PAS-ADD screening could help you catch problems before medication piles up.
Why it matters
You can now use the PAS-ADD with confidence in your adult ID caseload. Expect about 20 % to screen positive. Plan a full clinical interview next to weed out false alarms and start real treatment faster.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adults with Developmental Disabilities Checklist (PAS-ADD Checklist) is a screening instrument designed to help carers recognize likely mental health problems in people with intellectual disabilities (ID). To date there are no published PAS-ADD Checklist data on a large nonpsychiatric population of adults with ID, an important step towards developing norms for comparative purposes. METHODS: Informants who had known participants for a median 24 months completed the PAS-ADD Checklist on 1155 adults with ID living in community, residential care and hospital settings in a county district in the North-east of England. RESULTS: Normative data were obtained for the PAS-ADD Checklist for the study population with reference to gender, age, and type of residence. The overall prevalence of mental health problems was 20.1%, and the rates for affective/neurotic, organic and psychotic disorders were 14%, 3.9%, and 10.2%, respectively. Significant differences in the rates for particular disorders were found across gender, age and, residence type. CONCLUSIONS: The rates of mental disorders found in the study population were consistent with previous studies of general populations of people with ID using over-inclusive screening instruments. The PAS-ADD Checklist appears to be an easy-to-use and sensitive tool for identifying mental health cases in ID populations, but further investigation is required concerning the specificity of the instrument.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2004 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2004.00585.x