Events
Very often, a child's tears on the playground are taken much less seriously than those of an adult. And how do adults react to children who don't want to play anymore, who suffer from chronic stomach pain, or who even threaten to kill themselves?
A number of studies in recent years have found that adolescents and even young children can suffer from serious depressive disorders. At the same time, there is a heated debate between doctors trying to find out whether depression in preschoolers is a kind of developmental isolation, or whether it is a signal of problems that will occur in the future.
According to a recent study, preschool children with depression are more likely to experience depression again in elementary school. Specialists from the University of Washington periodically interviewed parents of 75 children aged 3 to 6 years who were diagnosed with major depressive disorder. When the results were compared with similar studies among children without any psychological problems, it was found that a depressed child was 4 times more likely to experience this condition again after one or two years.
The researchers note that these results highlight the extraordinary importance of early preschool detection of depression. The authors add that children with major depressive disorders in primary school are very difficult to treat, so it is important to detect it as early as possible.
According to Rachel Briggs, a professor at the New York Medical Center, childhood depression is a combination of several determining factors at the same time (genetic predisposition, ecology, family atmosphere, etc.) Children's negative experiences of this kind in the future become exactly the window through which they will perceive the world in the future. This is why early detection and treatment of childhood depression is so important.
However, while many doctors are enthusiastic about the need for this study, others are arguing that there is no such thing as “childhood depression”. “Early childhood should focus primarily on children's relationships with each other and their caregivers,” said George Scarlett, a child development specialist. In other words, what others call depression is actually a relationship problem, not a problem with children's internal perception of themselves.