A recently published research report found that 15% of children aged between 5 months and five years of age suffered from abnormally high levels of depression. The research noted that these children often had mothers with a history of depression. This cycle of depression needs to be broken.
Why? Because the fact that 15% of preschool children get depressed is hard to take, but so too is the lasting effect this can have on children’s ability to learn.
Preschool is a time when children are developing the foundational learning skills that they will use throughout their lives. This is the time they need to develop language, social, and cognitive skills that will form the basis of all their future learning. If a child is depressed he or she is not able to develop these vital skills. Their brain is too busy trying to handle the emotional impact of being depressed to be able to develop the learning skills they need.
I have seen young children like these, children who appear passive, lacking in emotion, and uninterested in anything around them. It is almost impossible to teach them anything until you can get through their emotional trauma and engage their thinking brain.
That 15% of children suffer from this depressive state at some time or other before entering school shocks me. Depression is a horrible illness, one that should not be allowed to prevent young children from getting a good start in life.
Now we understand more about the effects of this disease it should be possible to find ways to break the cycle, to prevent young children suffer the lifetime effects of early depression. Parents need support now more than ever.
