Study: Pre-Schoolers Can Get Chronic Depression
We’re crossing the Rubicon with this one: a new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry alleging that children as young as 3-years-old can and do suffer from chronic depression. I simply don’t much to say about this, except to note how the AP handled the following:
“Though sure to raise eyebrows among lay people, the notion that children so young can get depressed is increasingly accepted in psychiatry.
“University of Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Sharon Hirsch said the public thinks of preschoolers as carefree. ‘They get to play. Why would they be depressed?’ she said.
“But depression involves chemical changes in the brain that can affect even youngsters with an otherwise happy life, said Hirsch, who was not involved in the study.
“‘When you have that problem, you just don’t have that ability to feel good,’ she said.”
Oh, yes, us silly lay people out here with our outdated, traditional, hunter-gather notions of human development and moods, we just need to get with it and enter the glossy age of 21st Century psychiatry where all the little ones are disordered and must be medicated into the ground.
It also amuses–by which I mean, disgusts–me greatly that the AP just swallows the chemical imbalance theory of depression wholesale. That’s some nice skeptical journalism there.
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