Depression in Early Childhood

Joan L Luby, M.D.

Department of psychiatry, Washington University school of Medicine

The depression in early childhood is something that we do not talk about, Why?
Maybe because we think that children are always happy, that they do not have
something to worry about and that they do not pay attention in what is going on in their
surround. In this article they talk about why depression happen in early childhood and
the differents treatments that they can take.
Hypothesis: According to Joan L Luby the one that conduct the research about this
said that recently validated clinical depression in children as young as age 3, few data
available to guide treatment of early childhood depression. Base on a well-know and
effective manualized treatment disruptive preschoolers, is currently being tested for use
in depression. To balance safety and efficacy, dyadic developmental approaches are
currently recommended as the first line of treatment for preschool depression.
Methodology: Base on the study that they made the absence of significant
developmental delay and the report that the symptom are not impairing in preschool
setting that the child attends for short block of time are also common features. Data
have show that, like depression in older children, preschool depression is more often
characterized by age-adjusted manifestations of the typical symptom of depression than
my “masked” symptoms, such as somatic complaints or aggression. In a sample of 75
depressed preschooler, only five (7%) failed to meet criteria for major depression when
the symptom of irritability was set aside (J.L Luby et al., unpublished 2008 data)
The study also said that sometimes they are the ones that have the blame to fail to
spontaneously report symptoms just like the lack of playing, social interest, sleep and so
on. The study of depression in early childhood is relative new, however they stablish
that very young children are able to experience complex affects seen in depression
such as guilt and blame.
For the therapies they have two options, one of them is psychotherapies which are
know to be effective in adult and adolescent depression, the result of several smaller
CBT in school-age children have been promising. There is another treatment call Parent
child interaction Therapy-Emotional Development this treatment is base of the help of
the parents and it is manualized with 14-sessions. Homework is designed to enhance
skills and engange both parents and children to distract the child and found out the
reason of why he/she is depression.
author’s conclusions: For the authors the used of antidepressant medication is not
recommended, it is recommended used the psychotherapies and the Parent child interaction. It
is critical to explain to the parents and caregivers that the treatment is experimental and that
efficacy as well as Effects in growth and development remain unknown.
your critique: This article was for me a interesting, what I have learn that Early childhood
depression exist but they do not know what causes. I think that as a caregiver or pre-school
teacher we need to be more aware of the actions of our students and also talk with the parents
and make a action plan to be able to help the child on time and prevent other actions that the
toddler could made. I also felt like they should made more studies about the depression in early
childhood. Also if we think about it, this studies were made in 2009 which has 10 years since
then. We have more technology and more resources to found out the reason why early
childhood depression happen. Even though the article do not blame the parents I think that must
of the cases of depression in early childhood because of family problems.
how the information can be used in the early childhood field: by paying attention to them
and their actions. I think that we need to think about our students not as a child but as persons
who they have problems and that they need help to figure out what is going on. We need to take
care about them and also it will let us to communicate better with the parents.
 Citation
Luby J. L. (2009). Early childhood depression. The American journal of psychiatry, 166(9), 974–979.
doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.08111709