Preface

Summary

This, the second edition of The depressed child and adolescent, incorporates the latest clinical and research findings.

The resurgence of interest in emotion psychology is addressed in chapters dealing with the development of affect regulation and evaluation of self and others.

A major recent advance is the discovery that comorbid disorders at presentation and over the life span are of crucial importance for delineating depressive subtypes. A precise clinical characterization results in the development of more homogeneous groupings of depressive disorders that will improve the search for genetic as well as environmental aetiologies and enhance the specificity of neuroimaging studies.

Since the first edition, a number of treatment studies have been published in psychological therapies, and psychopharmacology has also established a scientific basis for the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medication. These findings remain focused on adolescents, with much still needing to be determined regarding the treatment of depression in prepubertal children. There is an increased understanding that there are aetiological pathways that involve much greater interplay between brain, mind and physiological and social environments than considered hitherto.

Whilst much remains to be done, including determining the processes and mechanisms by which genes exert their effects on the environment, it seemed timely to record the progress and achievements that have been made in the last five years by scientists and clinicians alike.