Psychiatria pre prax 5/2001

Specific Aspects of Depressive Disorders in Children and Adolescents

The depressive syndrome in childern often remains undetected because this possibility is frequently omitted (19, 21) or proper diagnostic criteria are not applied (12, 27, 28, 29). Our previous experience has shown that with the use of Kovacs scale (a self-assessing questionaire) it is possible to identify depressive symptoms, suicidal inclinations and other signs of serious risky behavior, even if a physician is not a specialist in psychology or psychiatry (7, 11). Difficulties in the identification of depressive symptoms in children and adolescents are caused by very complicated psychopathologic features and neither common social experience nor experience from psychopathology of adults can help in this identification. The depressive disorder in children and adolescents correlates significantly with the depressive psychopathology in a family and home circumstances in general. The article offers a survey of the given problem and deals with the prognosis of depressive disorders of childhood and youth. It also provides proper diagnostic criteria which may be applied to children. At the end of the article the author discusses the relationship between suicidal behavior in children and adolescents and other factors influencing the adaptation of children and youth (behavioral disturbances, abuse of alcohol and drugs).

Keywords: depression in children and adolescents, diagnosis, genetics, family pathology, life events, comorbidities, suicide rates, identification, scaling.