Depression in children and adolescents: complementary therapies

Depression is the world's leading cause of disability-adjusted life years lost among adolescents. Depression may affect 2% to 8% of children and adolescents, with a peak incidence around puberty. It may be self-limiting, but about 40% of affected children experience a recurrent attack, one third of affected children will make a suicide attempt, and 3% to 4% will die from suicide.

We conducted a systematic overview, aiming to answer the following clinical question: What are the effects of complementary treatments for depression in children and adolescents? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to August 2014 (Clinical Evidence overviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this overview).

At this update, searching of electronic databases retrieved 141 studies. After deduplication and removal of conference abstracts, 103 records were screened for inclusion in the overview. Appraisal of titles and abstracts led to the exclusion of 60 studies and the further review of 43 full publications. Of the 43 full articles evaluated, two systematic reviews were added at this update.

In this systematic overview, we categorised the efficacy for six interventions based on information about the effectiveness and safety of glutamine, light therapy, omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, s-adenosylmethionine, St John's wort (Hypericum perforatum), and vitamin C.