ABSTRACT
Over recent years, there has been an intense interest in the concept of depression in childhood. The issue is particularly complex because sadness and tears are common parts of all children’s lives and so cannot form any true basis for a diagnosis of a depressive illness. Moreover, the term itself has become so much part of common usage that it has begun to lose value as a description of a particular illness process. In addition, it is important not to lose sight of other emotional reactions in children and adolescents that can at first sight appear similar to depression but are a normal age variant. An excellent example of this is the mood lability which is common in the early teenage years, and presents as rapid changes of mood which are sometimes quite marked. It is occasionally difficult to distinguish this type of marked mood swing from the illness process where profound depression alternates with a very elated and over-cheerful period (known as bipolar illness – see Chapter 7), but the distinction is important since the ways to respond to these two types of mood variation are substantially different.
