Depressions in Children & Seniors

Depression takes a mild to severe turn, with the progression of time. It is very difficult to handle by the suffering individual irrespective of the fact whether the person is a child, a senior or in between.

In children depressions tends to persist with recurrence and continuance even in the adulthood and by and large remains untreated. An episode of depression in childhood is precursor of severe diseases in adulthood. Therefore it must be properly attended to with necessary treatment.

Depression in Children:

A child suffering from depression is often observed as pretending to be sick, because the symptoms are difficult to understand. The child often refuses to go to school, firmly grasps the parent and has many fears, which require that the confidence of the child is restored.

Grown up children show a bad temper, have a troublesome time at school. They develop a negative attitude with high irritation, because no one bothers to look into his problem. Although there is depression, but it is ignored as a mood swing pertaining to children of this age, who also behave this way, while they are developing. Often it is difficult to differentiate and diagnose the symptoms presented for they are on borderline and any variation is seen as normal for their age group.

Differentiating Depression in Boys & Girls:

Before puberty both boys and girls have equal tendencies to suffer from depression. After onset of puberty in girls around 13 years of age the rate of depression and behavior problems shoot up almost twice more than boys of the same age group.

Depression in adolescents is felt, when they are on the thresh hold of tremendous personal changes and are going to establish their identity of boy or girl, which is not like their parents, who have weathered many upheavals  in their lives and have become mature. There are often disagreements with parents. The boys and girls have different likings for clothes and appearance copied from the glamour world for which they have great affinity. They are either making their decisions or influence the decisions of other persons in the family.

Depression in Adolescents:

Depression in adolescents is often accompanied by anxiety and behavior problems. Their eating patterns are also disturbed and there is a tendency for substance abuse as an experimentation, which subsequently becomes a habit difficult to get rid off. Any intolerable situation can lead to a suicide attempt in which they see the end of their problems, without a second thought about others.

A study comprised of 439 adolescents, suffering with severe depression concluded that psychotherapy was highly effective treatment for adolescent’s depression. Caught up with the grave problem of suicides by adolescents, researchers are developing and testing plans for early detection of depression and finding methods for solving the problems before they reach critical stage leading to suicide.

Depression Felt by Seniors:

It is not necessary that depression shall set in with aging on the contrary few seniors feel very satisfied as they age, even in spite of physical discomforts and other age related ailments. Often the depression in seniors is ignored because of their different symptoms not pointing towards depression. Their way of expression of sad feelings is different.

Seniors are having varying degree of depressions besides some serious problems of the heart, cancer, diabetes, hypertension etc. requiring continued medication. These serious ailments add to the depression already present in them. The medicines taken by them are also causing some side effects including depression. Seniors also have vascular depression, also known as arterio-sclerotic depression or sub-cortical ischemic depression. This happens, when the blood vessels have loss of flexibility. They become very hard causing a constriction in blood vessels. There is considerable prevention in normal flow of blood and carry a potential risk of stroke.