More Than A Mood

Even the very young get depressed; early detection can help.

By Julie Weingarden-Dubin, published on May 01, 2001 - last reviewed on August 18, 2005

Your toddler sits alone and mopes. Where she once couldn't wait to watch Powerpuff Girls or play tag with the neighbors, she's now disinterested and lethargic. Put her favorite food in front of her, and she barely digs in. You're thinking, "The flu? Allergies?" Look closer. She could be depressed.

In an ongoing five-year National Institute of Mental Health controlled study, preliminary findings reveal that signs of adult depression are also found in children. "It's a surprising bit of news, even for people in this profession," says Joan Luby, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, who presented her study at a meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists. The official manual of psychiatric disorders, called DSM-IV, is based on studies of adults and often doesn't apply to children under the age of six. Therefore, symptoms in young children may go completely unrecognized.

"We believe there are normal fluctuations and mood states that occur in preschoolers so they don't appear persistently depressed for a two-week period" says Luby. A four-year-old is not going to vocalize suicidal thoughts or express depressive moods as a depressed adult might. That's why it's important for parents to be attentive. Depressed children can be overlooked because they are not disruptive or making trouble, says Luby.

The earlier depression is identified, the better. "At a younger age there is greater neuroplasticity or changeability of the brain, so it can actually be influenced in healthy or unhealthy directions," says Luby. After the age of six, the disorders can be chronic and more difficult to treat, she adds.

Preschoolers with depression are irritable and grouchy, or sad and withdrawn, says Luby. They may not get as much pleasure out of activities as they used to, or as other kids the same age, and they may act out negative feelings in their play. If you suspect depression, take your child to a mental health clinician who has experience working with younger children. "Nobody knows why depression is showing up in kids so young, or if this is new or different," says Luby. "It's probably that we are just more sophisticated in our ability to identify it."

Other researchers have tracked anxiety, which is strongly linked to depression, in older children and college students, and found that both groups are more anxious than in past decades. In one study, published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, anxiety scores from 170 samples of American college students (representing 40,192 students) were analyzed from research conducted between 1952 and 1993. In another study, published in the same issue, researchers analyzed anxiety scores during the same years in 99 samples of children, ages nine to 17. "The levels of anxiety have increased substantially from the 1950s to the 1990s," says study author Jean Twenge, Ph.D., a research psychologist at Case Western Reserve University. "I found the anxiety scores, on average, for children of the 1980s were higher than scores of psychiatric patients during the 1950s"

The increase in anxiety is linked to lower social connectedness and more environmental threats. In the 1980s there was more divorce, more worries about crime and nuclear war, and a fear of getting diseases such as AIDS. As for children and college students in the new millennium, anxiety levels are as high as in the 1980s or have increased, says Twenge, though the trend upward may not be as steep because threats such as crime rates and nuclear war have decreased since the 1980s.