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Assessment of Depression pp 324–342Cite as

The Assessment of Depression in Children and Adolescents

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Abstract

That there are significant differences between children and adults in the range, intensity, and comprehension of emotional states seems virtually unassailable. Hence, it is surprising that while the ontogeny of emotional expression has been a concern of psychoanalysis and developmental psychology for several decades, research in child psychiatry has only recently addressed itself to developing a theoretically sound and empirically validated understanding of affective disorders in children, their classification, and possible relation to adult psychopathology. Undoubtedly, there are many reasons for this neglect; (1) incompleteness of our knowledge of maturational and environmental influences that normally govern the elicitation, expression, and control of affective behavior in different natural settings through childhood, and the unknown influence of these processes on the triggering and phenomenology of emotional disorders; (2) psychoanalytic dictum that emotions in children are sometimes obscured by their tendency to blend with, modulate, amplify, or suppress each other [46,15]; and (3) the intrinsically “unstable” nature of the child’s affective systems, resulting from continuing shifts and transformations in the interpersonal, cognitive, and somatic domains, and the child’s environment.

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Authors
  1. M. Strober
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  2. J. S. Werry
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Mental Health, World Health Organization, CH-1211, Geneva 27, Switzerland

    Norman Sartorius (Director, Professor of Psychiatry, Professeur invité à charge partielle) (Director, Professor of Psychiatry, Professeur invité à charge partielle)

  2. University of Zagreb, Croatia

    Norman Sartorius (Director, Professor of Psychiatry, Professeur invité à charge partielle) (Director, Professor of Psychiatry, Professeur invité à charge partielle)

  3. Université de Genève, Switzerland

    Norman Sartorius (Director, Professor of Psychiatry, Professeur invité à charge partielle) (Director, Professor of Psychiatry, Professeur invité à charge partielle)

  4. Vanderbilt University, 242 Medical Arts Building 1211 21st Avenue, South, Nashville, TN, 37212, USA

    Thomas A. Ban (Professor of Psychiatry) (Professor of Psychiatry)

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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Strober, M., Werry, J.S. (1986). The Assessment of Depression in Children and Adolescents. In: Sartorius, N., Ban, T.A. (eds) Assessment of Depression. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70486-4_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70486-4_28

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-70488-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-70486-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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