Some people say that the richer the material, the farther away the depression is from us. Today's children live in a well-off society, which is arguably the happiest generation.
However, in fact, not all children have carefree childhood, and the colorful fairy tale world will also be shrouded in haze. In the cases received, children suffering from depression are more and more common.
10 year old children are moderately depressed. What's going on?
"I don't understand. The child is always good. How could he get depressed?" When Qianqian's mother saw the diagnosis report of her 10-year-old daughter's "moderate depression" from the hospital psychological department, she was shocked, so she led the child into the psychological consultation room.
According to her mother, Qianqian is the only child in the family. When her mother was 38 years old, she was pregnant with her. Shortly after the birth of the child, her father cheated due to an extramarital affair, and her parents divorced. Qianqian was raised by her mother alone.
Although she grew up in a single parent family, a strong minded mother attached great importance to the education of her children. She felt that she was talented and obedient since childhood, and had high hopes for her.
However, Qian Qian was weak since childhood, and it was always difficult to fall asleep. Even when she fell asleep, she was easily awakened, and had little food. At the age of 3, she often wet her bed at night. Later, when she was transferred to a fully boarded bilingual kindergarten, the problem of bed wetting was solved. However, the child became very timid, afraid to be alone, always suspicious, and often cried because of little things.
In order to make the children's character more cheerful, mothers often encourage children and create more opportunities for their exercise and performance. For example, let children actively participate in class cadre elections, assist teachers in managing class affairs, and apply for quality education training classes such as piano, dance, small host, choir, etc. for children, hoping to "grow" their courage and explore more talents.
In order to become the teacher's right-hand man and the example of the students, Qian Qian is not only very self-discipline, but also hard work in learning. She does not allow herself to be careless. Sometimes she accidentally misses the exam, and will be very remorseful for the difference of one and a half points.
Last year, when Qianqian was re elected as the class leader in the new school year, she cried bitterly for this reason for a long time. She always felt that the students in the class pointed and said bad things to her behind her back, and she was always distracted in class, or felt that the teacher did not like her anymore. She deliberately targeted her, and dared not look directly at her teacher. She felt like a needle on the back in school, so her grades fell sharply.
During the holiday, in order to let Qian Qian make up for her lessons, and because of the epidemic, her mother gave up all the outings. She tutored her children at home all day to complete all kinds of homework, arranged extra online courses in English speaking, calligraphy practice classes and painting classes, and clocked in every day.
I thought that after this holiday, the children would come back to school with full blood and vitality. But on the first day of school, Qian Qian was listless. When she got up in the morning, she was still sleepy, and didn't want to eat breakfast. After getting dressed, she was ready to go out. However, she kept yelling about stomachache, headache, crying, and refused to go to school.
The mother had to take the child to the hospital to see a doctor, but the pediatrician did not find any problems, so she had to let the child rest at home for a day.
Later on, Qian Qian struggled every day, and her mental state became worse and worse. My mother had to keep taking her to hospitals and was diagnosed as having no physical abnormalities.
She was finally assessed as "moderately depressed" when she went to the children's psychological department, which was also the reason why she was tired of school.
"Apart from studying at home, I didn't let her take on anything. Isn't it the duty of students to study? Where does depression come from at a young age?" Mother was both distressed and confused.
Compared with her mother's impatience and helplessness, the thin Qian Qian looked numb, her eyes were dull, and she said weakly: "I'm tired, I don't want to come, I want to go home and stay." She looked lazy and broken.
Pan Liwen, Senior Counselor of Guangzhou Heartball Psychological Consultation Center analysis:
Qianqian is a typical case of childhood depression. She has been sensitive, suspicious and insecure since childhood.
The mother is anxious and strong. Under the authoritarian education mode, the children have grown up along the planned "chicken baby" success path of "advanced cultivation, highlighting expertise, and crowding into famous schools".
As a child growing up in a single parent family, although she can understand the difficulty of her mother bringing up her own, she will always please her mother and work hard towards her mother's expectations.
However, in reality, she felt that it was difficult for her to meet her mother's requirements with all her efforts. Her heart was full of inferiority and despair, and her mood continued to fall, becoming particularly depressed and helpless.
When her mother applied for a training class for her, although she would also discuss with Qianqian and ask her child for advice, in fact, even if Qianqian didn't like it, she would use various reasons to persuade the child to accept the arrangement.
In Qianqian's heart, she felt that her mother seemed to care more about her study, couldn't understand her inner pain and comfort, and didn't give her time to play easily,
Gradually, she felt that she was nothing more than a tool for learning. She was not interested in everything around her. She felt that there was pressure and strange eyes all around. Life was meaningless, so she became tired of learning and refused to socialize.
Psychologist's interpretation:
In psychological diagnosis, depression is a kind of mood disorder. Its main symptom is persistent sadness and depression, and loss of interest in formerly enthusiastic activities. Sometimes it is also called severe depression.
The World Health Organization estimates that about 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. In fact, depression has become the primary disease affecting human health worldwide.
Many people think that depression is a glass heart. People suffering from depression are "cautious", "impatient", "aggressive", "fragile", and so on.
In fact, depression is a kind of disease, which has the same complete biochemical process as other diseases. The biggest feature is the high suicide rate. 70% of all suicides suffered from depression; One of the seven patients with depression finally committed suicide.
In recent years, suicides among adolescents have occurred from time to time, and childhood depression has gradually attracted public attention.
Especially in some big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the education method of "chicken baby" has become popular among middle-class families, constantly giving children chicken blood, arranging studies and activities, and constantly urging children to struggle.
As a result, in some schools, children's depression is even as contagious as influenza.
Therefore, parents and teachers should pay more attention to children's mental health, establish a correct parenting concept, understand children's feelings, and dredge children's negative emotions from an early stage.
What are the causes of depression in children?
The causes of depression in children include genetic factors, physiological factors, psychological trauma and environmental pressure.
If the child's close relatives suffer from depression, the child will also be prone to depression;
Physiologically, children's depression is related to dopamine receptors and dopamine secretion in the brain;
Children who have experienced major traumatic events are also easy to cause depression, and emotional related psychological barriers are highly related to the environment;
Learned helplessness is the most likely to cause depression. When children often feel that they cannot change their troubles, they are prone to depression.
In addition, family environment and parenting style are also important factors that affect children's illness. In the family, if parents often quarrel or severely punish their children, excessively interfere with their children, and excessively protect their children, they will lead to or aggravate their children's depressive symptoms.
How to recognize children's depression?
Some children have depressive symptoms in infancy, such as restless sleep, refusing to eat, always having stomach pain or headache, often having aggressive behaviors such as hitting and biting people, being overly afraid of people around them, or not letting others touch themselves, being absent-minded, often crying, etc.
Young children may show: low emotion, bad mood, easy to get angry, become clingy, refuse to go to school, often feel pain, and it is difficult to gain weight as expected.
Teenagers may show: insomnia, frequent nightmares, reversed work and rest, irritability, sensitivity, depression or anger, low self-evaluation, loss of hobbies; Poor school performance, or low attendance, social avoidance, substance or alcohol abuse self injurious behavior.
The above symptoms must last for at least two weeks before they can be identified as depression, and should exclude the impact of drug use or other physical diseases.
On average, a depressive episode will last for 6 to 8 months without treatment intervention. If the first attack is not timely and effective intervention, the probability of recurrence is high, and some will even be difficult to get out for life.
In particular, Qianqian, like this case, is more likely to suffer from depression because of its simplicity, sensitivity, self-esteem, stubbornness, strength, competitiveness, self denial, guilt, self blame, introspection, self guilt and other characteristics.
What should parents do?
Parents should master the relevant knowledge of depression, learn the correct concept of upbringing, and first of all, solve their own anxiety problems.
Many parents' anxiety originates from comparison and is satisfied with their own needs of looking forward to the success of their children and the success of their daughters. "Chicken baby" parents should avoid gathering together to exchange training and remedial experience, otherwise it is easy to aggravate the spread of anxiety.
Secondly, the most important thing for parents is to give their children enough companionship and support, listen more and speak less, and slowly guide their children out of depression.
◎ Companion: Parents' companionship can undoubtedly enhance children's sense of security. At ordinary times, they should pay more attention to children, communicate frequently, and ease children's anxiety and emotions.
It can be explained to children that depression is actually a disease, not a defect or weakness, which will be the first step of effective help.
◎ Correct guidance: listen to children's questions more, allow them to express their true feelings, and try to listen more and speak less.
Don't talk big or give simple advice to children, such as "how should you...", but stand on the child's point of view, feel the difficulties faced by children, give support and understanding to children, don't be too strict, and don't judge at will. You can face difficulties and find solutions together with children.
◎ Social participation:
Invite children to participate in social activities, but do not force them to go. If possible, ask children to participate in family activities together.
◎ Pay attention to suicide and self mutilation:
Taking suicidal and self injuring behavior shows that the child has not found a suitable way to vent his pain. Parents should pay attention to the child's suicide and self mutilation words! We should not take it lightly, thinking that children just scare their parents and lose their vigilance. We should take children's negative emotions seriously.
◎ Timely medical practice:
If the child shows symptoms of depression, parents should take the child to a professional psychologist in time, and cooperate with counseling and intervention under the guidance of a psychologist.
If the depression is relatively serious, and even has manifested psychotic symptoms such as auditory hallucination, visual hallucination, delusion, mania, etc., drug treatment is required.
How do psychological counselors conduct parent-child work?
After learning about the child's growth experience and the situation of the original family from Qianqian's mother in detail, the counselor, parents and children jointly defined the counseling goals and developed a long-term counseling program to alleviate the child's depression.
On the one hand, through interviews with mothers, counselors help them change their cognition, ease anxiety, and understand that children's growth is a "marathon" process. Sound personality and continuous learning motivation are much more important than short-term transcripts.
At the same time, it also allows mothers to let go of their need centered mentality, learn to "squat down" to understand their feelings from the perspective of children, and start from changing the parent-child relationship to give children a relaxed learning and living environment.
On the other hand, through sand table play therapy with Qian Qian, the counselor allows children to gain understanding, support and tolerance in a free and protected space, slowly presents different game themes on the sand table, releases internal pressure in a game similar to returning to childhood, smoothes the trauma in the subconscious, and re feels the safe state of being loved and protected, Gradually accept yourself.
Counseling lasts 1-2 hours a week. After a period of consultation, the mentality of mother and daughter has been significantly improved.
The mother asked her child to suspend all online classes and often accompany her to the child. However, Qian Qian's mood gradually improved. She talked too much and was willing to return to school. Every day when she came home from school, she would take the initiative to tell her mother about the school, and her face also had a long lost smile.
(This case has been approved by the visitor and some true information has been falsified)
*This is an original article by Pan Liwen. The company reserves the right to investigate according to law for unauthorized use.
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