Any psychiatrist will say that antidepressants are often an effective way to treat anxiety and depression in children and teens. However, parents who have read side effects and horror stories may be a little more hesitant to have their child ingest such medication. After …show more content…
Children can be happy one moment and the next moment they will be upset or sad and crying about something; that is normal. However, if sadness and moodiness last for weeks or more, it is time to get the child some help. This is one of the reasons child psychiatry is so difficult. Yet depression and anxiety left untreated can eventually lead to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, which progressively leads to the actual act itself; quite the catch twenty two situation! Though, in 1991 the CDI (Child Depression Inventory) developed a checklist for physicians to help determine the level of depression in children whether major depression or just general depression. “This system allows doctors to analyze children over a period of time to determine the possible cause of the depression, as well as requests feed back from parents, teachers, and caregivers.” (kidsmentalhealth, N.D. The system is primarily for children because of the simple fact that children can have a hard time communicating their feelings.
As the National Institute of Mental Health point out, there's a difference between experiencing unhappiness for a short period of time and one's daily life becoming affected by the symptoms of this illness for several months or years. Depression affects many people differently. For children there is a time prior to puberty when they are like to become distant and depression is likely to set in. In other words consider the time at which the child becomes