Drug Treatments for Children with Depression

There are no quick-fix treatments for adult or child depression. Depression is a legitimate mental disorder, but it needs to be treated differently from physiological ailments. Treatment of child depression involves different procedures, depending upon the severity of the condition, the age of the child, and an understanding of what is going on in the child’s mind.

Teen depression is quickly acquiring enormous proportions, and we now see more teens suffering from clinical depression than ever before. Clinical depression, in simple terms, is a prolonged state of sadness that refuses to go away. There are procedures for treatment that parents need to adopt, since the child cannot be expected to go to a doctor to ask for help.

Initially, you have to find a psychiatrist or a consultant who specializes in teen depression to receive proper evaluation of the condition. General practitioners or even specialists in medicine may not be fully trained to handle instances of clinical depression.

There are a variety of techniques that psychiatrists employ to treat child depression, but cognitive behavioral therapy is considered to be the most effective. It works much faster than other treatments like interpersonal therapy. The psychiatrist helps the child to identify the fallacies in perception, and leads the child towards arriving at positive results from situations and events that may be feared. An effort is also made to restore self esteem, so that challenges can be met head-on.

In some cases, the specialist may feel the need to prescribe anti-depressant medication along with behavioral therapy. However, before selecting a particular drug, the prevalence of bipolar disorder has to be ruled out. Bipolar disorder is classified as alternating mood changes from depression to mania, which requires strict monitoring and changing drugs from antidepressants to mood stabilizers.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) block the reuptake of serotonin, so that more of it is available to act on receptors in the brain. The preferred option of physicians, they are considered to be better than the old tricyclic drugs, which are now believed to have worked earlier on the placebo effect. However, much depends upon the choice of the specialist, who is in a better position to understand what the child is going through.

Antipsychotic drugs are only used for children suffering from bipolar disorder, autism, schizophrenia, and severe conduct disorders. Child depression treatments must be administered according to strict guidelines with regards to dosage and indications. Mood stabilizers like lithium have been found to be very effective in treating bipolar disorder in adults, but proof of their efficacy in treating children and adolescents is still under way.

Discontinuing medication is as important as deciding the amount. Stimulants, mood stabilizers, and antidepressants are serious drugs. Abrupt discontinuation may give rise to withdrawal symptoms. In severe cases of depression, it may be several months to a year before these drugs can be stopped. Moreover, there have not been enough studies conducted on the effects of these drugs on children, as children are not involved in clinical trials of these medications.