Depressed Infants?

"Depression, anxiety, the whole panoply of adult woes are woven into our genomes.  That may not be surprising to scientists, but new research shows that these conditions can start to express themselves much earlier than we knew — sometimes during the first year of life.  Trauma can trigger the onset; so can stress, and so can still unknown variables.  No matter the cause, we're increasingly learning that a baby's brain is not only far more fragile than we realized but far more like an adults too."

This startling claim appeared in an article, "Small Child, Big Worries" in Time Magazine (March 21, 2011).  The article cites research from Zero to Three (zerotothree.org), which tends to indicate that "10% of very young children have some kind of clinical emotional condition, about the same rate as in the adult population.  And while some of these ills are indeed unique to babies, a growing body of research shows that many others — including post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, major depression, insomnia, even prolonged bereavement — also afflict young children."

The article continues... "Once a problem takes hold, it is hard to calculate the odds of recovery; the field of infant mental health is so new that most studies have tracked kids only into the later school years....  In one study... 41% of preschoolers with an anxiety condition were still impaired by it four years later.  Children with preschool depression were six times likelier than other kids to have the condition later in life."

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