Children’s Global Assessment Score

The Children’s Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) (Shaffer et al. 1983) is one of the most widely used measures of the overall severity of disturbance in children. It is a unidimensional (global) measure of social and psychiatric functioning for children ages 4–16 years. The CGAS is based on an adaptation of the Global Assessment Scale (GAS) for adults and can be used as an indicator of need for clinical services, a marker for the impact of treatment, or a single index of impairment in epidemiological studies.