Fewer Positive Displays May Lead to Depression in Kids

A collaboration of researchers in the United States says that kids displaying fewer positive displays than their peers are at higher risk of developing depression. The investigator determined that the early symptoms experts should look for include more than displaying negative emotions.

The latter include crying or frowning more often than normal. Now, it would appear that kids who do not hug their parents, laugh or smile according to their age may also be at risk of becoming depressed.

Investigators from the University of Michigan and the University of Pittsburgh conducted the research on a batch of 202 kids and 140 mothers. The children were all aged between late infancy and 9.

For the experiment, the team separated the test participants into two groups. The first was made up of children who had mothers with a history of depression, while the second group had only kids with mothers that had shown no signs of depression before.

Once a year, all test subjects came into the lab, and were put through a variety of tasks, all of which were designed to elicit either positive or negative emotions. All these meetings were videotaped by the team for later reference.

“Surprisingly, it seems that it is low levels of happiness, as opposed to high levels of sadness, what may help explain why these kids too often develop depressive disorders,” explains Nestor Lopez-Duran.

The expert – one of the authors of the new research paper – holds an appointment as an assistant professor of psychology at U-M. The lead author of the work was Pittsburgh expert Thomas Olino, while other team members included Maria Kovacs, Charles George, Amy Gentzler and Daniel Shaw.

Details of the research appear in the latest issue of esteemed medical Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Lopez-Duran says that kids in the first study group, which should have been more likely to experience negative emotions, did not display these feelings more readily than their peers.

But the team noticed another interesting correlation. It would appear that, while kids in the first group were not more likely to cry or frown than their peers, they were more prone to display a lower frequency of positive emotions.

Without normal positive affection, these kids are less efficient in managing their own negative moods. In turn, this could be making them more vulnerable to depressive disorders.

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