How To Know If Your Child Is Depressed

How do I know if my child is depressed?

You will know if your child is depressed because of the specific criteria children being diagnozed with depression need to meet. These are set by the American Psychiatric Association and look at different variables of sleep, appetite, school functioning, socialization and several other issues. The criteria has to be significant in three to five areas where you have dysfunction. Of the ten depression areas that you get to pick from, out of those ten there will be five that have some impairment in them, and this impairment needs to be pervasive. It needs to be significant: it can't just be at home or just school, it has to be both at home and at school, or other areas of that child's life. Otherwise it may just be a problem with a parent or a personality conflict with a teacher, rather than depression. Depression has to be seen through several venues of their life.