However, that is not necessarily so. These needs are not always met one hundred percent for each child, so that there is some concern, anxiety and worry in children. And this can in fact lead to children feeling depressed. However, lack of enough food or clothes or not feeling loved by a parent are not the only causes of depression. In fact these may not even be the real causes of depression in children.
Depression is long-lasting.
It usually persists for more than a month at a time and is life-threatening. It has been easy to miss the signs of depression in children because it is usually associated with other behaviours such as aggressiveness, irritability, delinquency, hyperactivity. These behaviours can be symptomatic of or associated with several other disorders in children including learning disabilities, alcohol and substance abuse, and therefore it is easy to misdiagnose a child suffering from depression. In addition, particularly in older children, signs of depression could get covered up or confused with the emotional turmoil that is thought to be characteristic of adolescence. Therefore, moodiness or withdrawal in an adolescent could be dismissed as merely being a result of hormonal changes at that time.