Children's strategies for coping with depression

Rippere (1974-1983) has investigated adults' commonsense beliefs concerning behavioural strategies for coping with depression. The study report here was concerned with the developmental aspects of the concept of 'common knowledge'. It was designed in order to investigate, through conversations with children of various ages, the hypothesis that children may possess a common knowledge concerning the 'things to do' when they are feeling depressed. 120 children distributed across seven age groups (ranging from 4-11 yr) were asked in an open-ended interview "What's the thing to do when you're feeling depressed?". Their responses were subjected to frequency counts and content analysis. Content analysis of the data indicated that 50% of all responses mentioned 'Play' strategies, 12% mentioned 'Help and comfort seeking', and 11% mentioned 'avoidance' activities. There was an inverse relationship between the frequency with which items were mentioned and the number of items mentioned at that frequency. This finding supports the notion of the existence of a canon of commonsense 'things to do' when feeling unhappy, and accords well with the findings of Rippere.