Could your child be depressed?

This is an excerpt from an article originallty published on July 16, 2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle:

"At first, Andrea Carpenter blamed preadolescent hormones for her 10-year-old daughter's moodiness. "Allie was extremely irritable at home, and she'd get snippy with her dad and me for no apparent reason," says the Marietta, GA, mom. Life at the Carpenters' home grew so tense that the family started seeing a counselor who, after a few sessions, recommended that Allie visit a psychiatrist. "He mentioned depression, but I thought it was just puberty," Andrea says. Her thinking quickly changed after Allie said she wished she was never alive and talked about cutting her throat. "I was devastated -- I knew she wasn't a happy-go-lucky kid, but I never thought a 10-year-old could be suicidal."

In fact, depression is the second most common childhood mental health problem. (Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is number one.) An estimated one in 33 children and one in eight teens are depressed, and the World Health Organization predicts that the number of kids -- and adults -- diagnosed with the disorder could double by the year 2020. Fewer than a fourth of the estimated 12 million kids in the United States who suffer from psychiatric disorders receive treatment, however, which places them at high risk for failing school, abusing drugs and alcohol, and committing crimes. Kids with untreated depression also are 12 times more likely to commit suicide. The nation's suicide rate for children jumped nearly 10 percent from 2003 to 2004, the largest increase in 14 years."

For the full article please visit Could your child be depressed?.

The Stress of Autism

This is an excerpt from an article originally published on July 14, 2009 in the New York Times:

Raising a child with any developmental disability or behavior problem is difficult. But is there something uniquely stressful about autism? That is the question researchers at the University of Washington Autism Center tried to answer in a study of mothers of children with developmental disabilities.

I spoke with Annette Estes, associate director of the center, about the research and how it might make a difference for parents of children with autism. Here’s our conversation.

Q Isn’t it obvious that having a child with autism would be stressful for parents?

A What we were interested in is the evidence that is starting to come out that parents of children with autism were reporting higher levels of stress than parents of children with developmental delays. We know parents who have children with any kind of disability have more requirements and more demands on them than parents of typically developing children. We wanted to better understand what was making the added difference for parents of children with autism.

For the full interview and article go to The Stress of Autism.