Depression in Learning Disabled Children learning disability or childhood depres

In order to investigate the prevalence of depression amongst LD children, 103 completed the Children's Depression Inventory. Fourteen percent of the sample scored at or above the critical cutoff, more than in the general population but not significantly so at the.05 level. Comparing the most depressed children with the least depressed, upper versus lower quartiles, revealed that the former were much lower in self-esteem, tended to be oversensitive and shared traits associated with neuroticism. No differences between the two groups were found, however, with respect to age, sex, intelligence, type of learning disability or parental expectations. It is suggested that in dealing with depressed LD children their affective state and their personality be taken into account as well as their obvious cognitive handicap. There has been a considerable upsurge of interest in childhood depression over the past decade. The psychoanalytic viewpoint that it cannot exist, owing to the lack of superego development in chil-dren (Rie 1966) no longer seems to hold sway. Similarly, the argument that child-hood depression should not be regarded as a separate syndrome because it is a transitory phenomenon (Lefkowitz & Bur-ton 1978) has been strongly criticized (Costello 1980). There is still some sup-port, however, for the point of view that although childhood depression exists as a clinical entity it manifests itself in a different form from adult depression, e.g., as a conduct disorder, hyperactivity, somatic symptoms, school phobia, learn-ing disability, etc., and dysphoria which is the hallmark of depression in adults may not be conspicuous (Leon, Kendall, & Garber 1980; Morris 1981). At present the most widely held view of childhood depression appears to be that children experience depression in much the same way as adults but that there are neverthe-less some minor differences in its ex-pression since the child is still develop-ing and inhabits a different milieu fro