Depression in the very young.
Has your youngster been withdrawn and moodly lately? Have nightmares terrorized both you and your child? Has your toddler been more rebellious, defiant or disobedient than usual? Has your preschooler been tearful and peevish more often?We're apt to pass off deviate behavior as a passing phase that will soon be replaced by another one. But sometimes -- more often than we wish -- it is symptomatic of a more serious situation.
It may surprise you to learn that even toddlers can experience depression so severe that it can lead to antisocial behavior, cruelty to pets or siblings, bedwetting, temper tantrums, loss of appetite -- even suicide.
"What do you mean? Suicide among toddlers and preschoolers? Aren't you being ridiculously apprehensive?" you ask. No.
It's a fact that at leat one out of every five persons is going to be victimized by depression at least once in his or her life. And parents must face the fact that the second most common cause of death among adolescents is suicide. And now child-develoopment specialists, psychiatrists and counselors are aware that even small children can suffer depression so severe it can generate accidents, delinquency, drug addiction -- and, yes, even suicide.
Dr. Povl Toussieng, a child psychologist at the University of Oklahoma, is known for his studies of child depression. He says, "Many so-called accidental deaths may be undetected suicides." The child who accidentally cuts himself on sharp objects, the toddler who falls down stairs too often, the child who jumps out of a tree or off a roof may be considered accident prone. In reality, the youngster may be suicide prone.
"For some reason," he goes on, "people like to camouflage suicides as accidents, especially when it happens to young people."
"Ten years ago we didn't seem prepared to recognize suicidal tendencies among children," says Dr. Carol Butler, clinical psychologist and supervisor at the Rosewood Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center in Texas, "It's not like that anymore."
Dr. JoAnn Bradshaw, a psychologist, says a special danger with childhood depression is that "Children, especially the very young ones, don't think of death as a final thing." They see people on TV getting shot, falling off buildings, burning up in a car crashes and then returning next week as well as whole as before. Sometimes, children will make remarks about running away to where no one can find them, getting sick enough to die, or even pretending to stab themselves with a play knife or to shoot their heads off with toy guns -- and then do the real thing.
Children are under great stress and tension today due to the changing structure of the family. Single-parent households, step-parents, working mothers, divorced parents, etc., tend to break down the family units and weaken the sense of security children need to cope with today's world.
Dr. Barry Garfinkel, a Toronto psychiatrist, studied 500 youngsters who had attempted suicide and found that their parents were three times more likely to be separated and twice as likely to have undergone divorce. The death of a parent was also a factor. "Whether the family is intact makes a real difference. The biggest predictor, in my view, is not having an adult around to offer advice or help."
Psychologist Carl L. Tishler of Ohio State University, says, "Family breakups set the stage. These children have suffered an early childhood loos of some major proportion, perhaps a divorce, badly handled, when they were very young. Then they get better and everything looks OK, until they are hit by another loss."
Dr. Joaquim Pugh-Antich, professor at Columbia University, goes further in his evaluations. He submits the idea that youthful depression could be caused by a physical condition rather than an emotional one. In a group of depressed youngsters he studied, he found that 90 percent of them had abnormal levels of the growth hormone in their blood. The same abnormal level that appears in the blood of depressed adults.
Dr. Christopher Hodgman, child psychiatrist at The Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, says, "Childhood and adult behavior may be more closely linked than a lot of people like to think. We're looking again at behavior that we have always accepted as bad nurture (caused by a bad home environment or disruptive social influences). There's much evidence now that there are underlying biological causes for such behavior."
Hodgman makes the observation that a predisposition toward depression can be inherited and lie dormnat until something major triggers a reaction. It can be the separation of parents, the death of a grandparent or a pet, a move to a new community, a new school, etc. Youngsters haven't the vocabulary to discuss their feelings, they are ashamed to admit "babyish" feelings, or they don't understand why they feel so unhappy and miserable.
Short periods of moodiness, the blues, or withdrawal don't necessarily mean abnormal behavior. But if the behavior lasts for any length of time, it's wise to begin an investigation.
Here are some questions that can clue you into abnormal behavior:
1. Does your child spend too much time alone in his bedroom?
2. Does he complain no one likes or understands him any more?
3. Does he argue and fight with friends or siblings?
4. Does he sulk or lose his temper over trifles?
5. Does he cling too tightly to you, another member of the family, a stuffed animal, etc.?
6. Does he suffer from nightmares, wet the bed, revert to babyish behavior?
It's the degree and the length of abnormal behavior that can indicate a problem is developing that needs attention. It could stem from an upheaval in the family, a loss or change that is bewildering or frightening, or even an abnormal level of growth hormone in the blood, a genetic predisposition, or some physical handicap such as poor eyesight, poor hearing, or poor nutritional diet.
The depressed and suidical youngster may not realize that his feelings are unusual and believe everyone feels as he does. His frame of reference and lack of knowledge can handicap him to such a degree that he's unaware that his world is, in fact, unreal.
It's easy to ignore deviate behavior and pass it off as a phase the youngster will outgrow. In most cases, that's a true evaluation. But in some, it's not. Because depression masks itself in many deceptive ways, it's easy to overlook or minimize symptoms that are serious enough to require professional help.
The thousands of suicides among teenagers is serious enough to draw attention to the fact that many of them could have been averted had parents and teachers recognized the symptoms of serious depression that often begin to surface in early childhood that could be treated and corrected so the fatal attraction of suicide would have lost its appeal.
Vivian Buchan is a regular contributor to Pediatric for Parents. She writes on many subjects.
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| Author: | Buchan, Vivian |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Pediatrics for Parents |
| Date: | Sep 1, 1991 |
| Words: | 1141 |
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