Childhood depression in the primary education stage: what it consists of and what teachers can do

Abstract

Childhood depression needs to be spotted as quickly as possible, otherwise it may become more serious and permanent. In view of the risks that depressive disorder poses for the healthy development of children, we have produced a paper that has two main aims: firstly, to offer primary education teachers up-to-date information on depression, and secondly, to put forward proposals to enable primary education teachers to deal with the symptoms of depression or, as far as possible, to reduce the emergence of them. The pa- per covers the characteristics and frequency of depression, types of depression, differential diagnosis of depression, causes, information on intervention in it, and recommendations for dealing with the symptoms of depression. By way of conclusion, it is pointed out that if one is keen to address the subject of depression from the school perspective, it would be of interest if teachers were to develop their knowledge of positive psychology further.