BMJ  2004;329:1394-1396 (11 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7479.1394

Education and debate

Rethinking childhood depression

¹ Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Trust, South Rauceby, Sleaford, Lincolnshire NG34 8QA stimimi@talk21.com

Unhappiness among children seems to be rising, but labelling it as depression and prescribing antidepressants is ineffective and possibly harmful. It is time to focus on the underlying reasons

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Increasing numbers of children are being treated for depression. At the end of 2003, over 50 000 children were prescribed antidepressants, and over 170 000 prescriptions a year for antidepressants were issued to people under 18 years old in the United Kingdom.¹ Recent evidence has suggested that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are largely ineffective and may be dangerous in this age group.^{2 3} Older antidepressants have already been shown to have no beneficial effect in people under 18.⁴ So how did we get into this mess? Undoubtedly part of the problem is with pharmaceutical industry tactics, designed to enable greater consumption of their products.³ However, the gateway diagnosis to prescribing antidepressants to under 18s is that of childhood depression. In this article I discuss the notion of childhood depression and suggest that the medicalisation of children's unhappiness is hindering our ability to respond effectively to this problem.

Meaning of childhood

Western society's ideas about . . . [Full text of this article]

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Childhood depression

How good is the scientific evidence?

Utility of childhood depression in treatment decisions

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