ABSTRACT
Although depressive disorders may be the most widely studied and best understood
psychological disorders among adults, our empirical knowledge of depressive disorders
in children just began to emerge in the 1980s. The field has made many strides during the
past two decades, but it appears as though the existing research raises more new
questions than it answers. Why has research on depressive disorders in youths lagged
behind that for adults? Perhaps it is due to the widely held misbelief that childhood is a
carefree, happy time; therefore, a youngster would not be depressed. Maybe it is due to
the common misbelief that adolescence is a time of turmoil and distress; thus, signs of
depression would be dismissed as something to be expected during this developmental
period. On a professional level, prior to the 1980s, debates over the existence of
depression in childhood dominated the literature, and it is very likely that these debates
delayed relevant research. Psychodynamic theorists initially argued that children could
not experience depression. According to psychodynamic theory, depression is a superego
phenomenon, and, because children have undeveloped superegos, they cannot be
depressed. Later, the debate centered around the idea of masked depression: Children
were believed to experience a depressive disorder as an underlying pathological
phenomenon that caused a variety of overtly expressed disturbances, including virtually
all psychological disorders of childhood. The shortcomings of this view were realized
(e.g., when was an emotional disturbance during childhood a disorder other than
depression?), and this position was abandoned. Subsequently, it was argued that
depressive disorders during childhood and adolescence were a normal developmental
phenomenon that did not require clinical attention. Empirical research soon refuted this
position. Depressive disorders during childhood and adolescence clearly are not the
norm, and, although episodic, tend to be of long duration (Strober, Lampert, Schmidt, &
Morrell, 1993), more severe than adult variants, and they tend to recur (Ambrosini,
Bianchi, Rabinovich, & Elia, 1993).
