The Emotions of Childhood and Adolescent Depression

by Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

Depression in children and adolescents is a state of emotional sadness that expresses itself in many ways, from a teenager hiding in her room not doing her homework to a ten-year old acting out in anger at everyone within screaming distance. The patterns of interactive emotions that make up the moods of depression are sadness, disgust, contempt, anger, fear, guilt and shame.

Parents, teachers and school administrators sometimes overlook or are not aware of childhood and adolescent depression and its effect on behavior and school performance. In measures of authoritarianism in nearly four hundred occupations, teachers ranked number three, behind state police and army officers. Dacey, a writer on creativity, stated that people who have authoritarian personality characteristics could become quite angry when those in an inferior position fail to behave in a subservient way. Certainly not all teachers share authoritarian personality characteristics and many who do are still empathetic and compassionate to the emotional needs of their students. It is a sad reality, however, that depressed children or adolescents are too often punished in one way or another when they experience failures in schoolwork or attendance due to the depression.

The parenting practices of creativity-centered parenting can minimize and even heal childhood depression. Creativity-centered parenting utilizes practices that persuade, teach and love rather than coerce, over-control or punish, such as family meetings, open and effective communications and the nurturing of empathy and uniqueness. These practices insure healthy communications that balance disengagement and enmeshment and remove roadblocks between the parent and child or adolescent.

My approach to parenting is based on humanistic psychology with an emphasis on emotion-centered psychology. The emotions coordinate and guide motivation, perception, thinking and learning. Each discrete emotion has a package or script that organizes, informs and alerts the human being for a readiness of action to accomplish a particular goal. Parents can be taught effective ways to increase the child or adolescent's interest and excitement, which helps pull them out of depression by changing their physiology from the listlessness and fatigue of depression to the liveliness of happiness.

Empathy for the emotionality of their child or adolescent can convince parents not to use punishment of any kind-grounding, taking away items, time-out and corporeal punishment-because punishment aggravates and deepens depression. Punishment intensifies feelings of worthlessness, helplessness and hopelessness, and may increase the chance of outright rebellion. Advocates of punishment do not warn parents that punishing noncompliant behavior may cause active violence toward the parent.

The Emotions of Depression

Sadness is a feeling of irrevocable loss of vitality, of self-esteem or of an interrupted relationship. It can result from the devastating loss of a loved one or divorce. The child or adolescent who has lost a sibling might feel sad because the parents' grief and involvement in the death of the sibling make it feel like he has lost his parents, too. Sadness is experienced when a goal is interfered with, such as the interruption of an infant or toddler's attachment by having a depressed parent. There is a moving away feeling in sadness, and it has a quality of submission or resignation.

Anger is a feeling of dominance, a moving against the situation or person who is blocking one's goals. The depressed child or adolescent uses anger if it was modeled in the family as a way for people to get their wishes and demands fulfilled. If the child or adolescent gets a good return on their investment of acting out in rage, then anger becomes a part of the child or adolescent's emotional repertoire. Children and adolescents who experience depression are usually internalizers of their emotional problems. They "act in" and aim their anger toward themselves, with periodic outward explosions that can mislead a parent into missing that their child or adolescent is depressed.

Disgust is what a child or adolescent experiences when they feel revulsion or are nauseated by something or someone. The depressed child or adolescent may experience their school or home environment as contagious and noxious. An infant might look away and avoid the gaze of a depressed parent to avoid getting infected with the parent's depression. Disgust interferes with affiliation and causes insecure attachment and bonding to parents and school. Depressed children or adolescents are disgusted with themselves because of their lack of interest, energy and motivation that leads to a lowering of self-esteem, a deficiency of success in school and difficulties with peer relationships.

Contempt directed toward the self in depressed children and adolescents can lead to feeling worthless to the point of suicide. An intense self-hatred accompanies contempt in a depressed, internalizing child or adolescent. When a depressed parent mistreats a child or adolescent, or when there is family violence, it involves a loss of respect for human vulnerability and imperfection. Hostility, coercive family processes and punishment of a child or adolescent cause the pollution of self-contempt. Contempt is the main emotion that causes severe self-hatred and the feelings of helplessness, worthlessness and hopelessness that most always accompany depression.

Fear sets the physical aspects of depression that ready the body and mind of the child or adolescent to be vigilant and prepared to face an immediate, concrete, and overwhelming danger. Families of depressed children and adolescents may be overly involved in their child or adolescent's life and may use extreme measures of control to get them to toe the line. Fear of being punished and of not being able to perform daily household chores and schoolwork result from the lack of concentration, fatigue and memory problems associated with depression. Depressed children and adolescents also fear rejection by their peers because depression makes them avoid their happier friends. Depression makes the child or adolescent concentrate on and intensely sense the negative aspects of family and school life.

The depressed child or adolescent experiences guilt because they feel like they have broken some moral code of family, school or peers. Guilt comes about when children or adolescents lie to peers to avoid a social event for which they do not feel the necessary vitality. They may lie to their parents and pretend to be sick because they don't feel the energy to get out of bed, do chores or go to school. Accusations by parents or teachers that the child or adolescent is manipulating the situation to get out of work, further aggravates their guilt. A vicious cycle develops because of the misreading of the young person's motivation. Parents may then punish when they should be seeking professional help.

Shame is felt when the depressed child or adolescent does not live up to parents' or teacher's expectations, or to their own ideals. They may feel shame from not being able to perform in sports or academics, from not being popular or from being over or under weight. Being molested elicits shame and depression. Shame makes a child or adolescent feel shy and inferior and leads to avoidance, nonassertiveness and poor relationship skills. Not having the motivation to do school work or the physical energy to accomplish goals causes shame. The depressed child or adolescent feels shame from the disgust they feel about their contaminated interpersonal parent and peer relationships and poor school performance.

Depressed children and adolescents need love and support in the home and in the school. The emotions of depression diminish feelings of love and joy, causing barriers that interfere with heart, body, soul and spirit. It is difficult for a depressed child or adolescent to feel optimistic and hopeful about themselves, their world and their future because they are drowning in an internalized, pessimistic self- and world-view.

Reference

Dacey, J. S. (1989). Fundamentals of Creative Thinking. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Izard, C. E. (1991). The Psychology of Emotions. NY: Plenum Press.