Depression in children: parent, teacher, and child perspectives

Depressed and nondepressed children were found to differ in the types of behavior problems manifested at home and at school. Children rated as depressed by their parents on the Personality Inventory for Children evidenced significantly more conduct problems, anxiety, impulsive hyperactivity, learning problems, psychosomatic problems, perfectionism, and muscular tension at home than children rated as nondepressed. Depressed children were rated by their teachers as displaying more inattention-passivity than nondepressed children. A significant but modest relationship was found between parent report and child self-report of the child's depression. Depressed children attributed positive events to external causes and negative events to internal causes significantly more than did nondepressed children. The specificity of these results to depression was also examined; the particular features of childhood depression are compared to the features of adult depression.