Depression in Children and Adolescents: Nature, Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment

Depression in youngsters may be one of the most overlooked and undertreated psychological disorders of childhood and adolescence. A number of formal and informal systems of classification are described. In general, these systems view depression in children and adolescents as similar in symptom expression to depression in adults. This article describes the significant gains that have been made over the past decade in the development of measures for the assessment of depression in children and adolescents. Although only a few control-group psychological treatment studies have been published, results of these studies are summarized and suggest that psychotherapeutic interventions with moderately depressed children and adolescents are effective. New directions in research on the nature of depression in children and adolescents are delineated, and in particular the findings of significant comorbidity existing in depressed children and adolescents. The need for school psychologists to understand the nature, issues in diagnosis, assessment procedures, and therapeutic methods specific to depression in children and adolescents is discussed.