Bell Relationship Inventory for Adolescents (BRIA)

With adolescents, the presenting problem may be academic, emotional, or behavioral, but the solution is often interpersonal. If you look at the teenager's interpersonal world, you'll have a better chance of understanding his or her school performance, emotional issues, and behavior.

Evaluate adolescents in context

The Bell Relationship Inventory for Adolescents (BRIA) offers a quick and convenient way to evaluate psychological disturbance and interpersonal relationship problems in preteens and teens. It gives you a glimpse into the interpersonal world of the adolescent, providing a context in which to view data obtained from achievement, neuropsychological, and personality tests.

Assess attachment, social functioning, and emotional bonds

Fifty items, covering five scales, measure the adolescent's ability to maintain a stable sense of identity and appropriate emotional bonds with others:

Alienation - Lack of trust, difficulty with intimacy, feelings of alienation

Insecure Attachment - Sensitivity to rejection, fears of separation and abandonment

Egocentricity - Lack of empathy, self-protectiveness, tendency to control and exploit

Social Incompetence - Social discomfort, shyness, difficulty making friends

Positive Attachment - Satisfaction with current relationships with peers and parents

The BRIA provides standard scores and percentiles for each scale. Norms are based on a sample of 815 children and teens (11 to 17 years of age), 705 from public schools and 110 from clinics and residential treatment centers. The sample includes roughly equal numbers of boys and girls from various ethnic backgrounds.

Identify teens having trouble with interpersonal connections due to trauma, NLD, or PDD

In schools or clinics, the BRIA can be used to identify preteens and teens who are likely to have difficulty with interpersonal relationships. It may be especially helpful in assessing youngsters who have experienced trauma, as well as those with nonverbal learning disability, Asperger's Syndrome, or other conditions in which interpersonal connections are problematic. By revealing deficits in object relations, the BRIA can also help distinguish between conduct disorder, borderline personality disorder, mood disorders, and psychosis. In addition, the Positive Attachment scale can inform treatment planning by uncovering feelings of support that might moderate difficulties indicated by pathological scores on the other scales.