Symptoms of Depression
Children and teens who are experiencing depression often feel sad, depressed, or down. They may also have other symptoms as well.
These symptoms can include:
- Feeling less interested in activities that they normally like to do
- Feeling irritable
- Feeling bored
- Loss of appetite or increased appetite
- Problems concentrating
- Problems going to sleep or staying asleep
- Thinking and/or talking about death (in younger children, can be expressed by having a lot of play themes involving death)
- Suicidal ideation – expressing that they wish they were dead, making plans to hurt or kill themselves, or rehearsing ways that they might hurt themselves
- Engaging in self-harm
Treatments For Depression
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) proposes that people make evaluations about different areas of their lives, and based on how they are seeing what’s happening, make conclusions about their lives that are depressing. When participating in CBT, your child or teen’s psychotherapist will help your child or teen to consider the ways that he or she is evaluating different parts of his or her life. Then, the psychotherapist will help him or her to look at things differently.
Behavioral activation of depression is an approach to treatment that suggests that sometimes people feel depressed because of a lack of meaningful or positively reinforcing activities in their lives. Treatment using behavioral activation of depression involves trying different activities to improve mood.
Interpersonal therapy (IPT) suggests that youth feel depressed when they have a lack of fulfilling interpersonal relationships in their lives. When participating in IPT, your child or teen’s psychotherapist will help your child or teen to examiner and change the ways that they are relating to other people.
Often, children and teens benefit from more than one approach to the treatment of their depression. As part of a multi-factored approach to treatment, we sometimes recommend a consultation with a pediatrician or psychiatrist to determine if medication might also be helpful in addressing biologically based forms of depression.