ABSTRACT
After decades of debate (Digdon & Gotlib, 1985; Kovacs, 1986; Lefkowitz & Burton, 1978), there appears to be a growing consensus that children as young as 8 or 9 years of age do experience depressive syndromes similar to those seen in adults in terms of social and cognitive impairment and symptom presentation. Moreover, there appears to be general agreement that by the middle to late elementary school years, children can provide reliable and valid reports of their symptoms (Weisz, Weiss, Wasserman, & Rintoul, 1987). Debate continues, however, as to whether children as young as 5 or 6 years of age can experience such depressive phenomena, or reliably and validly report on depressed mood and feelings (Digdon & Gotlib, 1985; Edelsohn, Ialongo, Werthamer-Larsson, Crockett, & Kellam 1992; Ialongo, Edelsohn, Werthamer-Larsson, Crockett, & Kellam, 1993). Those who question the ability of young children to experience or report on adultlike depressive phenomena typically point to putative developmental constraints on the young
child’s ability to understand, recall, and label emotional states or to experience the debilitating cognitive features of adultlike mood disorders, including poor self-worth, guilt, hopelessness, and helplessness. The latter either represent integral features of current definitions of mood disorders in adults (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) or are at the core of prominent cognitive and cognitive/social learning-based theories of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Beck, 1974).
