Cry me a RiverFollow

article link



Girl, 4, 'suffering depression'

Mollie is being kept out of school for health reasons
A four-year-old is suffering from depression because she cannot attend the same primary school as her nursery friends, according to her doctor.

Mollie Murphy from Sunderland struggles to sleep and vomits before lessons, so her parents are keeping her at home.

Sunderland Council said Mollie missed out on a place at East Herrington school because of a late application.

Her GP, Kevin Weaver, wrote to the local authority asking for a change of school, citing stress and depression.


Mollie's mother, Victoria Anderson, said: "I thought how can a little girl suffer from that? It's an adult's problem and Mollie's only four. But he told me it does happen.

"There wasn't a thing wrong with her before. Her health was fine, but now she's backwards and forwards to the doctors."

Mollie's parents say they are happy with the standards of her current school - Farringdon Primary - but are keeping her at home for health reasons.

A council spokesman said and there were no free places at East Herrington school but the family could appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman


As a parent to a 4 yr old myself, I found my eyebrows raising when I read this. While it is definitely more violent sounding than most kids, I waver at believing this is true depression. Kids this age have a tendancy to act out when they dont get what they want. During this time in their lives they are learning how to stand up for themselves, and make choices, and this is where tantrums can really come in full force. Kids around this age are not yet geared to being able to control their emotions, especially when disappointment kicks in.

And what kind of depression is this? I highly doubt it's the chemical imbalance that constitutes drugs to make it better. It sounds more like a child not getting what she wants and being very upset, but something that all kids will go through in life. Everyone in life suffers from being denied something they really wanted. In my opinion, this helps to build us up as stronger people.

Is this learned behavior? Nothing is stated about her home life, but could this reaction be something she may have picked up from her family, or just her type of personal makeup? Has she maybe made the connection that if she holds out and shows just how upset she is that in the end she will get what she wants? And going from there, if she does eventually get into this preschool, do the effects go away and she misses the learning opportunity that you dont always get what you want? What would happen if years down the road she doesnt get into the prep school she wants?

Thoughts?

I can see why a four-year-old would suffer from depression after being forced to join a different school than all of her friends.

Grown-ups can get depressions after being forced away from family and friends, so why shouldn't children? I joined a school where none of my old friends attended and granted I didn't suffer from a depression, but perhaps the kid is a bit more sensitive than others?

The mind is a tricky place and people don't know much about depression, despite its "popularity" these days. I went into a depression earlier this year and it probably would have killed me if I hadn't found out. Every day seemed like an impossible obstacle I had to beat and in the end it felt like there was no reason to go to bed, because you would just wake up to a new day of problems. Thus I started going to bed at 3-4 AM during school nights and I stopped caring about how I looked or what I did during the day. People thought I was just being lazy, but in reality I was having a life-threatening depression. Life-threatening because I would have killed myself in the end.

Luckily I got over it, but it took a lot of articles on the subject to convince me that I was depressed and not a, as I first diagnosed myself, paranoid schizophrenic.

Chances are the child doesn't know what she's going through, so the doctor is making the call based on her behavior. A child will throw a tantrum, but this sounds more like prolonged activity that interferes with her normal routine. I'd have to look up the criteria in the DSM...



Another helpful NIH study


Edited, Nov 10th 2006 at 8:45am PST by Atomicflea

Her symptoms are very similar to what my youngest went through at 4. I was told it was all psycho somatic and just pretend putting baby power on her tummy was medicine for it. Her problem stem from a teacher who yell at the boys in her class all the time. With depression running in family I wish I had know better now. My Parents where not willing to face the facts until she had been in treatment for several years.

This didn't work and later when she was 9 she was pulling her hair out, so I took her to be hospitalized. She is currently off medication, but knows she has to stay busy with work, or the depression will come back before long.

Somewhere (here is expanded article) I read a very good list of behaviors of children with bi-polar disorder. I wish I had the list when my oldest was growing up and had gotten her treated earlier. I'm just lucky she fail at her attempt to end the pain and am proud of her openness about her illness.

I'm sure if I was a child now, they would have me taking anti-depressants and getting the help I wish I had 40 years ago.

See now this is where I guess Im coming from. I started moving around a lot as a child and it seemed like the moment I made a couple of really good friends we were on the move again. It wasnt until high school that I finally stayed in an area long enough to attend the same school. Yeah it sucked, yeah I was unhappy, but it made me be able to adjust to change.

Now I would be of the mind that maybe she does have some sort of imbalance that could constitute that she has depression. HOWEVER, the article stated she ONLY started showing symptoms when she was not able to attend the same preschool as her friends. It stated she had been fine beforehand. I would think that symptoms would have shown earlier than when she met her first lesson in disappointment.