Comparative Review of Depression

Depression affects everyone, people with it and people without it. The group of people that you would not immediately associate depression with is children. But research shows that 2% to 17% of average elementary school students are affected by depression, and that 14% to 54% of elementary school students with disabilities are affected by depression. Treating depressive symptoms at an elementary school age level helps prevent depression in adulthood. That is the key in two articles that I have reviewed recently. The articles are entitled “Treating depressive symptoms in schoolchildren” written by S. De Cuyper, B. Timbremont, C. Braet, V. De Backer, T. Wullaert and “Family environment, attitudes toward life and death. Depression, and suicidality in elementary-school children” written by B. Payne and L. Range. The purpose of “Treating depressive symptoms in schoolchildren” is to inform us that depression can be overcome with treatment, and that adults and adolescents are not the only people affected by depression. Elementary school age children are affected as well. The article summarizes a pilot study done by a group of “investigators”. A letter was sent to four different elementary schools asking for participation in a study involving fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students demonstrating depressive symptoms. Thirty-six families showed interest in the study; however, only twenty families were invited to be involved I the study. The children were broken into two groups, a control group and a treatment group with ten students in each group. The study involved children ages 9 to 11, and there were 15 girls and 5 boys. All children were white and of normal intelligence. The treatment group started treatment then and the control group started treatment one year later at the start of the new school year. The students were asked to do a number of exercise to measure different symptoms. From all the information collected in the study, a program was made called “Take Action” and a manual was written. The manual and program were intended for children between the ages of 9 and 13, suffering from a unipolar depressive disorder, dysthymia, or depressed mood. The treatment consists of 16 weekly sessions of 60 minutes each and 2 booster sessions, respectively one and four months after treatment students were asked back to do a follow- up. The study was designed to test the adaptability of the “take action” program. In the conclusion, the results of the study indicate that time and patience is needed to integrate the acquired way of thinking into daily life. The article, in my opinion, was very interesting and informative. It had more than one persons point of view. It was consistent and was relevant to my topic. The weakness of the paper was that it was hard to read and understand. For my second article I wanted to chose an article that was similar to “Treating depressive symptoms in schoolchildren” and so I picked “Family environment, attitudes toward life and death. Depression, and suicidality in elementary-school children.” “Family environment, attitudes toward life and death. Depression, and suicidality in elementary-school children” was the second article I read. The article was also about a group of people that conducted a study on children. 78 children were involved in this study, there were 27 boys and 51 girls. Their ages ranged from 8 to 13. Of the participants, 46 were black and 32 were white and all children were of normal intelligence. In this study one of the ways the children were tested was by reading them four stories. The four fairly tales are about