Depression assessment in children and adolescents assisted at the psychosocial support center for children and adolescence in Anápolis-GO

Abstract

Introduction: Until recently it was thought that childhood depression did not exist or appeared in a masked manner. It was from the 70’s there was increased interest in the field of research, recognizing the significant presence of this disorder among children and adolescents, getting many advances made in understanding and treating this problem. The DSM IV considers childhood depression similar to depression in adults. However, if caveat that a depressed child may have irritable mood rather than sadness; or reveal a decline in academic performance, as well as loss of self-esteem and the feeling of worthlessness. A child with untreated depression may develop behavior patterns that become resistant to change, with a certain severity or suicidal ideation. Objectives: This study aims to understand and characterize the incidence and prevalence of childhood depression on Psychosocial Child Support Centre (CAPSi) of Anapolis-GO. Methods: This work traces the temporal trend in the incidence of depression in children and adolescents in CAPSi since the entry of each record. It was an observational and descriptive research doing a retrospective evaluation of the history of the patients. Results/Discussion: From the data analysis it was found that the diagnosis of depressive episode is most common in adolescence than in childhood, females were slightly more frequent with depressive episode. Most patients had no clinical comorbidities, but the most prevalent diseases were headache and migraine. The main psychiatric comorbidities were Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder. The results on the relation of self-mutilation and sex were different from the analyzed studies, whose prevalence was given greater for males than females. Most cases of suicidal intention occurred in patients over 14 years, and 21% suffered bullying, 33.3% of patients who have suffered physical violence, 40% of patients who have suffered verbal abuse and 50% of victims of sexual violence. Conclusion: Clearly, studies of depression in this age group are scarce in Brazil and the world, in addition, the mental health of children and adolescents in Brazil has become a matter of public health recently. In that sense, the understanding of epidemiological data of this disease allows the improvement of quality of assisted by CAPSi attention.