Signs of Depression in Children

Video Transcript

"I'm Dr. David Thomas, I'm a practicing psychotherapist with the Whitford Thomas Group in Tampa, Florida here to discuss the signs and symptoms of depression in children. When we think about depression, it's important to remember that depression really is a disturbance of thought. Thought drives depression as for all the negative mood states, anxiety, anger and guilt. Depression is also caused by or created by though. So if you want to change the depression it's important for you to change the thinking that drives that. Or looking at children with depression, understand that children up to about age 10 or 11 do not have formal thought or thinking developed at that point. So a lot of the work we would do with children would be helping them with a lot of coping statements trying to identify some of their sense of hopelessness or helplessness to help them better cope with whatever stress they perceive to be in their life. With children you tend to see with the depression, sleeping a lot, avoidance, behaviors where they might create some stomach ailments and headaches and things of that sort to avoid doing certain things. Often times with depression you tend to see as with adults kind of a decrease sense of pleasure and enjoyment in activities and things that typically they would find extremely enjoyable and pleasant to participate in. Often times with depression you'll see children tend to eat a lot or tend to horde food and hide food, again mainly to comfort themselves which often times you'll see with childhood depression. Other symptoms or signs of childhood depression would be in mainly their sense that they're not going to be able to do better or produce in an achievement way. So often times they tend to kind of give up hope. Childhood depression is a tough one. If you believe your child is depressed, I certainly encourage you to see your family physician or see a therapist. Hopefully this information has been helpful that I provided to you regarding childhood depression, the signs and symptoms of childhood depression. From Tampa, Florida, I'm Dr. David Thomas."