The Corner Society: "Depressed Mothers and Troubled Sons: Defining and Redefining Childhood Depression, 1970's-2000's" Cosponsored by the Department of Psychiatry, URMC

Laura Hirshbein, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Department of History, University of Michigan

Depressed Mothers and Troubled Sons: Defining and Redefining Childhood Depression, 1970's-2000's 

At the time of the formation of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry in the 1950s, the general consensus in the field was that depression was not something they needed to worry about because it was so rare in kids. Instead, the biggest problem for child psychiatrists was the high number of boys with troubling behavior who flooded their clinics. But in the context of the National Institute of Mental Health's extensive research programs on adult depression (much of which centered on women), child psychiatry researchers began to redefine, theorize, and reconstruct what depression might look like in kids. A major focus of research was in the relationship between depressed mothers and their children. By the twenty-first century and the increasing prevalence of SSRIs to treat depression, professionals in the field insisted that depression was a problem for an extraordinarily high number of kids. The role of gender in childhood and adolescent depression remained murky and many in child psychiatry emphasized the interactions between mothers and their children, as well as the role of hormones. This presentation will take a critical look at the discovery of the problem of depression in kids and the assumptions that have been embedded in its definitions.