Psychopharmacological perspectives in childhood psychoses

1. Neuroleptic drugs are still widely employed in childhood psychoses, but new experiences on a large number of cases in this field, have shown the usefullness of antidepressive drugs, either alone or associated with neuroleptics, also when depressive symptoms are not clearly evident. 2. This peculiar aspect, still noticed in pathological situations of less gravity, calls again attention to childhood depression and to the difficulty of identifying it. 3. The problem is developed and discussed as follows: a. The psychopathological features regarded from the psychodynamic point of view; b. The neurofunctional background in various ages; c. The pharmacodynamic characteristics of the drugs; d. The good results with lithium treatment in several cases allow the authors to outline some clinical pictures as well as biochemical markers as to recognize endogenous depression in childhood.