Childhood Depression: Prevention, Early Identification, and Remediation (From Adolescent Suicide, P 231-238, Robert W. Cole, Jr., ed. -- See NCJ-117025)

• NCJ Number: 117044
• Author(s): M Morris
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 8 pages
• Sale Source: Phi Delta Kappa
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Reprinted from School Guidance Worker, V 38, No. 2 November/December 1982

Annotation

Childhood depression is a misunderstood phenomenon which is often unidentified and unremediated, but teachers and others in contact with the child can be effective in identifying and addressing it.

Abstract

The myth that childhood is a happy time is used to support the widespread denial that children may experience intense unhappiness, sadness, and depression. Causes may range from obvious trauma related to the loss of a parent, depression in a parent, or parental dependence on the child by a needy adult, to the less obvious trauma, such as entering school. Signs requiring further investigation for the possible presence of depression include psychosomatic problems, food problems, sleep problems, anxiety, self-depreciation, inferiority feelings, behavioral signs indicating depression, inability to play or enjoy hobbies, work inhibition, learning difficulties, self-injurious behavior, periodic outbursts of anger, passive aggression, immature behavior, and masked depression through delinquency. Even one of these symptoms warrants further investigation. However, the main criteria that a classroom teacher can use to identify depression are a sense of depressed affect, withdrawal from social functioning in the classroom, and concern by the teacher and consultant that depression is handicapping the child's enjoyment of available satisfactions in the classroom. Regular classroom teachers can remediate childhood depression by facilitating a bonding process. A consultant model for helping teachers work with depressed children is also useful. 4 references.