Clinical depression, an overwhelming and persistent feeling of hopelessness, sadness and lack of self-worth, is not confined to adults. Children can suffer from it too.
It is only in recent years that it has been recognised that even young children can be depressed. In the early 1980s many psychiatrists believed children were incapable of experiencing depression because they lacked the emotional maturity to feel despondent. Now it is thought that children as young as 18 to 24 months old can display symptoms of depression, once a certain level of emotional and cognitive development has been reached.
'Childhood depression is more common than people expect, because it often goes undiagnosed,' says Robin Balbernie, consultant child psychotherapist in Gloucestershire. 'It is easy to diagnose a child with ADHD because they are the one bouncing up and down. But a depressed child is sitting quietly, not mixing and not being noticed. Yet even if it is diagnosed there is not a lot of medical intervention, because children cannot be prescribed medication for depression.'
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